In a galaxy far far away…

Awesome video, definitely worth a watch even if you aren’t a huge fan of Tool.

So, a few months ago I embarked on an adventure that involved backing up our production webserver to tape. Yes, tape. A really big, hunk of magnetized plastic. It was a long trip, took way more time than one would think is necessary. First, the Powervault unit was not even powered on, go figure. Then a second trip down to the server room reveled that the SCSI cable was not plugged into the correct channel! So after all that was resolved, the trick was getting the data backed up properly. Here is how our data (that needs backed up) is laid out:

/home/clients - all of our clients web files are stored her.
/var/www/[hosted domain] - we have several hosted domains, both from a couple clients and some sites we run ourselves.

We are also making use of AutoMySQLbackup and the files that it creates need to be stored long term on the tape as well. So here is what I did…

This code keeps the latest backup on the disk for easy access as well as puts it to the tape. I try to keep a basic log file to have an idea what has been written and how large it was. I haven’t found a good way to keep a running count of how much has been written to the tape yet. Once I do, the log file will be simplified quite a bit. This script is run M/W/F and a similar script that backups only the SQL files Sa/Su/T/R.

There were a few sites that were of great help getting the tape backup working well:
http://www.whoopis.com/howtos/tapebackup.html
http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-tape-backup-with-mt-and-tar-command-howto/

There was another site, which I don’t have handy at the moment, but I will update as soon as I find the link.

I have been really busy the past month. Between ramping up projects at work and school there hasn’t been much time for anything else. I have gotten quite a few of my videos from the Rockford Airfest and the Cleveland National Airshow uploaded to YouTube. You can check out my new airshow page to see more information about those. I also have a ton of good stuff from the Gathering of Mustangs and Legends. There will be more on that as soon as I am able to check out the video I took. My dad got some pretty good pictures too:

Wow! It was amazing. The show was really great. I actually paid attention to the Aerobatics shows. Oh what have I missing! I really wanted to go a second day, but time (and money) didn’t allow for it. I need to start planning for “Airshow season” in advance. I might be able to go to a few more next year. I need to get my pictures from Air Fest up…

Pictures from Saturday can be found here. Thanks to my buddy Steve for operating the digital cam while I took video!

“Help me Obi Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.”

I saw a good article over at pickthebrain.com about how to increase your GPA. Some of these stuff seems like common sense, but they are worth noting none the less.

“Measure twice, cut once.” When it comes to any major (or minor!) project, planning is everything. Many headaches will be avoided if you start planning your network infrastructure by clearly defining the requirements and needs for the network.

What do you need out of your network infrastructure? What goals or mission is going to be accomplished by your network? What does your “business” revolve around? Do you leverage technology to meet your goals or are you a provider of tools using that technology? The first thing that comes to mind for me, is email. There are many options, and this choice could determine what route you go for the rest of the network. What do you need from your email? Email is closely followed by a “domain” solution, file server, and web hosting (no particular order to the last items).

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The weekend was exciting indeed! I picked up a new (to me) set of wheels and tires for my car; MOMO RPM 17″ wheels with Nito NeoGen tires. They are super sticky and about as wide as you can wedge under the car, even with the rear fenders rolled.

First week of the semester, whoo hoo!!

I am taking Computer Graphics, Data Communications, and Geography (Real Americans fail geography. - The Colbert Report).

Should see some interesting projects in Graphics. It should go along nicely with the senior design project we did back in the spring, a 2.5D Real Time Strategy game. We used Open GL through the .NET based bindings for the SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) Libraries.

Be looking for a posting about designing your network infrastructure (geared around Not-for-Profit organizations and very low budgets) in the coming week!

I have found a few nifty ways to copy your settings for Putty. Putty is a windows SSH client allowing a secure cli (command line interface) to *nix based servers. I use it daily for various tasks related to managing the Ideas Unleashed servers. I do have a habit of formatting my systems semi-frequently, at least once a year, so keeping track of bookmarks, Filezilla settings (a topic for a future blog), Putty settings, and many other things difficult.

However, saving and restoring your Putty Settings is a snap! From the Start -> run dialog, run this command to place a .reg file on your desktop that you can merge on another windows system to copy your putty settings.

Thanks to Joe Mansfield’s comment for the shortcut!

The Super Mario Brothers theme for your listening pleasure. For more information on Tesla Coils, check the Wikipedia article.