Git Based Backup

Hey Everybody, sorry about the extended absence. I’ve been very busy of late! I’ve recently decided to try out the newest thing in SCM (Source Control Management), Git. Lots of people are getting on the git bandwagon, and I’m not sure if I’m totally on board yet. One of the things that appealed to me, however, is the ease of setting everything up. I’ve decided, after years, to have an actual backup solution for my website. I’ve been left without backups before, and it’s bitten me in the arse recently. As you can probably guess where this is going, yes, I’m doing git based backups of my website – database and all.

This lets me do some interesting things. First of all, I can have nightly backups, and ‘checkpoints’, points where I could easily roll back changes if I screw something up. Another is a site that only is a snapshot of the live site, whether for testing or redundancy (via branches). And lastly, it lets me have a log of recent changes that I make, and look at changes and have the ability to revert changes that I may have done while working on a script. I typically commit and push changes to a script with a detailed message when I make changes, outside of the nightly backup cycle.

At first, I was curious to see how MySQL dumps would do inside backups. So far they seem to do very well, and don’t mind being in SCM. It gets dumped to text, so stuff that doesn’t change… well doesn’t change. I back up data to one spot regularly, and then semi-frequently to another. This is how it’s laid out:

The live website is denoted with a 1, and the attached database is also pictured. This is where the general traffic and changes are, aka, the critical data. Every night, the data gets replicated to computer 2, which is completely in another country. Unfortunately it’s on a slow link, and not 100% reliable, but hey, at least it’s somewhere right? Computer #3 is my laptop, which is where I may or may not make changes to some files and testing, before committing them. On the server (computer #1), changes are pulled and merged into the repository automatically (if they’re non conflicting), before the fresh changes are committed. I’ve been running this nightly for about a half a week for my low traffic sites, and recently moved it to my blog. The scripts that run will let git automatically add new files, and delete deleted files, having a perfect snapshot of the blog. I’m going to continue testing this on more of my websites, before I make it available to the websites that I host, including a control panel type feature for managing snapshots.

It’s also worth noting that the connection between my server and the main git repository is secured by key based SSH authentication. I haven’t had any issues with this so far and has been an excellent solution.

I like to give credit, where credit is due, so I’m going to give mad props to my webhost, who processed my request for a shell within 15 minutes, installed git within 15 minutes, and fixed the git installation in 15 minutes. Their level of support has been truly remarkable. A big thanks to you guys! Check them out (A Small Orange). If you like them, and decide you want to sign up, don’t forget to use the referral link on my blog .

ZDLSharp/qZDL Preparing for a Beta Release

It’s been some time, but the ZDLSharp Qt beta is nearing beta release. ZDLSharp 3.0.5.3q fixes issues that the C# version of ZDLSharp had. While still in beta, it will be referred to as ZDLSharp, but rebranding will take place once 3.0.5.3q leaves beta to qZDL. It’s currently only available in SVN (See the page for the version for access details), and should compile on all 3 major platforms (Windows, Linux, OSX) without many issues. Bug reporting may be done via the SourceForge Project Page. It’s currently only tested on x86 but there is evidence to support that x64 also works. Testers would be appreciated for all platforms/architectures. To compile, Qt 4.3 or greater is required (Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Hardy Heron or greater for example).

Update: Here’s a screenshot of the DMFlag picker running on Ubuntu 9.10.

qZDL DMFlag Picker

Happy New Year!

Goodbye 2009 (which was a good year in my opinion) and high hopes for 2010!

RSS Readers

I’m not sure why, but lately Akregator has been behaving poorly. Sometimes when it updates a feed, it adds articles from other feeds into the feed and marks them as unread. This gets extremely annoying and every attempt I’ve made to fix the problem has not proved to be fruitful.

Akregator Showing the Articles in the Wrong Field

To solve this, I didn’t create a bug report with KDE nor tried to fix it myself. I’ll have to admit that sometimes I’m not a very good member in the Open Source community. I simply don’t have time to fix the problem. I looked through Gentoo’s package manager Portage for some RSS readers. The selection wasn’t very great, but I installed a few of them. The first one, Blam Newsreader boasts to be simple. Unfortunately it was TOO simple for my use. I went down the list, and found Liferea (I don’t like the name much, it sounds a bit too much like urea). I copied all my feeds from Akreagtor to Liferea and so far so good. It has all the options and features I want from an RSS reader. I’ve been using it for not very long, so I’ll update this later with more comments. Here’s the interface…

Liferea Interface Reading a Web Comic

Busy Busy Busy!!

I just stopped by my blog to check up on things. It appears I was a few versions behind so I thought I should probably update it while I was here and avoiding doing my school work. After updating, I felt kinda guilty for not updating the blog more often.
It’s fall, so why not? School is back and super super busy, and I haven’t had ANY time to write a single line of code since I left work in the summer. How bad is that? That’s quite unlike me. This term’s course load is tremendous. I’m taking…

• Embedded Systems
• Electrical Engineering
• Algorithms
• Ethics in the workplace
• Numerical Methods

All of those classes besides the ethics class are extremely demanding and have me working many hours a day just to keep up. All this week has been 12+ hour days, except today when the lack of sleep started to catch up to me.
Just thought I’d give you guys a quick update on what’s going on, and hope to hear from you soon!

Migrating to a Gentoo-style Update System

Woah woah woah. ZDL is not dead! I’m planning on the new update stuff, and I must say I really like Gentoo’s updating method. There’s two different streams (beta and stable) on at least 3 different operating systems. Here’s a proposed package method…

• qzdl-win-x86 stable unstable
• qzdl-linux-x86 stable unstable
• qzdl-osx-x86 stable unstable

This of course would all be released in qZDL 3.0.6.0, and no plans are being made for x64 or ppc releases. I’m currently working on 3.0.5.3q, which is the transition release between ZDLSharp (C# based) to qZDL (Qt Based). I’m hoping with my past experience with Qt that I can quickly finish up what I have done so far, and start pushing out a release. I’m going to be releasing the ZDLSharp source around that time on my website (it’s currently on request only). Everything should be documented on the wiki, and I just made a commit to the svn repo.

Two things: one, awesomeness for Biohazard. Two, I seem to now have editing permissions for my own posts after all

The Awesomeness for Biohazard
Yes, it IS safe for work, would I post THAT type of content here? You gotta give me some credit.

Anyway, you now have VGL -and- this! Woot! (Be sure to show Miyth!)

…Where are my manners? Long time no see, everyone! I’ve been more than a bit busy these days, and am gearing up currently to make yet another excursion to VGL with the ‘Hazard. Frankly, I do worry that he might evaporate in the light of the sun, but that is a risk I am willing to take, given the concert missed if not. I hope to return with many tales of “NO FREAKIN’ WAY!”, “SO AWESOME!”, “ROFLMAO!” and “PWNT!” (The last being me destroying Biohazard in ad-hoc wireless fun on the trip over. If not, at least there was Pwnage on one of us lol). And Bio, bring thy DS! We may have left ours in the car last time, but there is no way we can afford to miss out in this E3 closing ceremony concert.

Well, I am tired. I think sleep sounds like a good plan. Night, everyone!

Random Freezups

My laptop is sick. Very sick. For the past few months, sometimes when I move it or bump it, the screen goes black and the sound skips. Then sometimes, when I try to turn it back on, nothing happens. It’s a problem that until the weekend, was easily avoidable and a livable nuisance. In an attempt to fix the problem, I reseated both my harddrive and ram. Shortly after that, I began having freezups when it was sitting on my table. Getting quickly VERY frustrated, I gave my laptop a few swift hits on the side, which seems to actually fixed the problem. Since my “fix”, I’ve had one freezup. I’ve done some reading, and one other persons says they have a faulty ram slot. In a few months, I’m going to try putting in new (and more) ram, and hopefully not as cheap as the replacement ram that’s in there now. If I still have problems, my laptop is still under warranty (which is now 2 and a half years old). My only problem is if I get a replacement laptop, is if it’s as compatible with Linux as my current one is. I’m very happy with the hardware currently in my laptop, and I’d be afraid to lose that compatibility.

Update: It seems that my second stick of ram is not being recognized at all, but I haven’t tried to fix it yet. Hopefully I can, sometimes I really need the extra memory.

Oh, Hi

Wow, has it really been two months since I’ve blogged? Sorry guys!

If you’ve been talking to me lately, you probably know I’m pretty busy with school. The assignments, papers, and midterms just keep on marching at me as fast as I can do them. Unfortunately, my schedule is extremely inefficient for getting things done. So let’s do a recap!

Christmas

Christmas was pretty busy, and unfortunately the weather played havoc with a few of my plans. There was a few storms around Christmas and on New Years, which forced me to juggle things around a bit. For those that don’t know, I got a shiny new Canon EOS 450D (Rebel XSi), and you can check out pictures on my flickr page.

School

I’m taking a few interesting courses right now:

• System Analysis, Design & Project Management
• Professional Practice
• Computer Organization II
• Operating Systems I
• Anthropology – Religion and the Sacred

This keeps me busy pretty much all the time, and I haven’t had much time to do anything but school work in the past couple weeks.

Programming

All of my current programming project are unfortunately put on hold. Thing’s I’d love to get done is qZDL, and OCam. OCam (name still under consideration), is a little program I developed during the Ottawa OCTranspo strike to look at the City of Ottawa webcams easily. The app lets me flick through all the webcams in a way that’s analogous to using a TV (including “stations”). I’m working to add more and more webcams to this, and maybe release it.

iPhoto 09 first thought!

Faces is really cool.

Places is neato too.

But you can’t make smart albums with Faces or Places? Why not? Why can’t I have “All Photos with myself AND dad” ?

Oh well. Otherwise it’s wickedsweet.