I was backing up our SVN repositories to DVD a while ago and wrote an entry on our wiki detailing how I’d done it. Thinking this is the kind of thing people will have to do at some point I thought it could be useful to share.
The method I’ve used is to create a single tar file of everything you’re looking to backup and then split that file into chunks which fit onto a single DVD.
Install GNU Core Utilities
Before we start, you’re going to need gsplit installed. This comes as part of the GNU Core Utilities package, so you can either download it from there or use your favourite package management software.
You can either build from source,
wget http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-6.9.tar.gz
tar xzvf coreutils-6.9.tar.gz
cd coreutils-6.9
./configure
make && make install
Or use a package management tool like MacPorts.
sudo port install coreutils
Split your content into chunks
Put all the files you want to backup into one folder, create the tar achive and then split that into chunks.
mkdir archive
# … add some content to the archive/ folder …
cd archive
tar -cvf archive.tar *
gsplit -b4500m archive.tar
After you’ve burned each generated file to a DVD, delete both those and the source archive.tar file as they’ll be using quite a lot of space on your drive.
Restoring
Should the worst happen and you need to get your content back, copy all the files from across your DVDs to a folder on your machine and run the following.
cat x* > archive.tar
tar -xvf archive.tar
I’ve always been on the lookout for a small application to remind me to take regular breaks from my computer, as it’s easy to get totally involved in what you’re doing and lose track of time.
The few I’ve found in the past have always had their problems, from terrible interfaces to being overly intrusive – think alarm calls and locking the computer. Thankfully I’ve found the perfect app for the task – AntiRSI.
As well as reminding you to take breaks, it’s small, unobtrusive and highly configurable. As an added bonus it even takes idle time into account so if you’ve told it you want to take 5 minute breaks each hour and leave the machine idle, the counter for your next break will adjust appropriately, clever!
I was trying to share a folder across our local network a moment ago and no matter what permissions I gave it, it wouldn’t appear for anyone accessing my computer as a Guest. Cue one of those head-slapping moments when the problem, and solution, suddenly becomes alarmingly obvious.
If you’re having the same problems, chances are you’re sharing a sub-folder whose parent isn’t configured for sharing. In my case, I was trying to share the iTunes Music folder (full path from home directory Music/iTunes/iTunes Music) but in this case, both the Music/ and Music/iTunes/ folders didn’t have the appropriate permissions for sharing, so OS X was correctly preventing anyone else from accessing it.
Solution is simple – I shared the Music/ folder instead.
Some great news coming from the Subversion developers recently, announcing that merge tracking will be included in the upcoming 1.5 release. From the announcement;
Merge-tracking is when your version control system keeps track of how lines of development (branches) diverge and re-form together.
…
While Subversion 1.5 doesn’t make merging as easy as a system like Git or Mercurial, it certainly solves common points of pain.
It’s no surprise that they mention Git, as it’s starting to gain some serious traction (notably within the Ruby/Rails community) thanks to it’s superior branch handling.
I haven’t been entirely convinced that the switch to Git would make sense for me. Branching an entire project is something I need to do only occasionally (one of those times being this week, coincidentally) and the other benefits Git offers, while appealing, aren’t enough to make me think I can’t live without it.
Now with SVN improving one of the two flaws I think it has (the other being it leaving .svn directories littered throughout your project, something which I believe is also going to be fixed), I think I may well stick with what I know for the time being!
Decided to take the plunge and move my blog over onto Wordpress. I’m really impressed with how much it’s improved since I last used it.
Compared to writing my own blogging software, which is what I’d done previously using Rails, everything is easier. The admin interface is superb, with the post, media and plugin management all top notch. Check this evaluation of the Wordpress 2.5 interface (which was designed by Happy Cog no less).
Still using the default theme at the moment but I’ll create a custom one soon, if only just to get rid of the horrible justified text!
