12:47
- I spent all
morning recovering
from an error I made first thing this morning while doing my routine
daily backup.
Instead of copying /usr to /usrback and then writing /usrback to DVD, I
copied /usrback to /usr and then wrote /usr to DVD. Arrrrghhh.
Fortunately,
the only thing I've lost is the mail I received between yesterday
morning and this morning, nearly all of which was listserv traffic, I
think. If you emailed me in the last 24 hours, it's gone, so please
resend it.
Fortunately, I tar up Barbara's mail as a separate
step in the process, so I was able to recover the mail she
retrieved
yesterday evening and all of her newer mail is still up on the server.
I
had to rebuild my directory structures and delete older stuff that was
still living in /usrback, which is why I'm later than usual posting
this.
As
I was setting up to record a program on our DVD
recorder
Saturday, it struck me that we have no convenient single-syllable word
to describe that process. With a VCR, we "tape" something. With a DVD
recorder, it sounds very odd to say we're going to "disc" something. We
could just say "record", of course, but that violates the one-syllable
rule.
Barbara's in favor of continuing to use "tape" as the verb. As she
points out, we still "dial" the telephone, even
though telephones
with actual dials have almost disappeared. Thirty years ago,
it
might have been reasonable to try to establish the change to "key" a
telephone, but by now "dial" is so solidly established that it will
never change. Still, it's early enough to establish a good
word
for recording to disc, so I'll start advocating the use of
"disc"
as a verb.
Of course, "tape" had an active history of being used as a verb,
including with regard to recording since at least 1/2" days. The only
common usage of "disc" as a verb refers to using a harrow to turn the
soil in a field. I suppose "write" might be a reasonable alternative to
"disc", but "write" is too ambiguous for my taste. To me, "Don't forget
to write Left
Wing" sounds
even stranger than "Don't forget to disc Left Wing".
So "disc" it is. Spread
the word.
With any luck, "disc" as a verb will become as commonly used as another
neologism I invented 15 years or so ago, "coaster" for a ruined
writable CD. I remember the exact moment when I coined that usage. My
friend and co-worker John Mikol was in his office, playing around with
one of the first commercial CD burners, which he'd gotten on loan. The
thing was about the size of a laser printer. It cost more than $20,000,
and blank CD-R discs cost literally $50 each. John started the burn
process, which made it most of the way through the disc (at 1X), but
aborted near the end. "Shit," said John. "Jesus, John. You just made a
$50 coaster," I replied. I posted the story to a mailing list (back in
those days we still used UUCP and had bang addresses instead of @
addresses) and it caught on. Perhaps "disc" as a verb will be as lucky.
We had dinner with our friends Mary and Paul Saturday night. They
mentioned that they were having some problems with their Xandros
system, which sound like a hardware issue. I'll have to make time to
get over there in the next day or two to get them running again. It's
amazing how few support calls Xandros generates. If I were trying to
support friends and family on Windows boxes, I'd have a constant flood
of problems, most of them caused by spyware, viruses, Trojans, and
general Windows problems. With Xandros, I never hear from people about
any problems. It just works.
17:05
- They say that the
malls are always full of men on the evening of 24 December, all of them
searching desperately for gifts. But I'm not like that.
My Saturnalia shopping is now complete, literally weeks ahead of time.
A couple of the items were backordered and may not arrive in time, but
I have enough loot on order to make sure there'll be good stuff under
the Saturnalia tree for Barbara on Saturnalia morning. Getting the
stuff installed in pretty wrapping may require expert (female)
assistance.
At one point, I thought my credit card was literally smoking. It
was on my desk right under my desk lamp, and I noticed a whisp
of
smoke rising from it. It took a moment before I realized that what I
saw was merely some smoke from my pipe that had settled near the credit
card.
09:21
- I knew when I posted my
account of yesterday's backup problems
that I'd hear about it from my friends. Here are two representative
examples, both of which say pretty much what everyone else said:
--------
Original Message --------
Subject: script.
Date: Mon, 05 Dec 2005 19:03:03 -0500
From: Brian Bilbrey
To: Robert Bruce Thompson
You simply MUST script your copying routines. I don't try to remember
what I'm going to copy, I just have ~/bin/backitup run every night, and
I run it manually right before doing my offsite transfer (which is
accomplished by running another script on the backup landing machine.
Do away with manual operations that are error-prone.
And
--------
Original Message --------
Subject: I thought Xandros was all GUI-like and automated and stuff?
Date: Mon, 5 Dec 2005 23:54:11 -0800
From: Roland Dobbins
To: Robert Bruce Thompson
So, why are you making manual backups, heh?
Why don't you just cron them?
Well, as I've said before, I do these stupid things because I'm stupid.
Or, more precisely, because I'm ignorant. Yes, I know about cron,
rsync, tar, and other tools, and I even have a pretty good idea of how
to write a script and make it executable. In the past, it was a
make-versus-buy decision. I could spend a couple minutes every morning
doing a backup with Xandros File Manager, or I could spend the time
once to learn how to use those tools and write a script to automate
them. I didn't bother with the latter because spending a
couple
minutes a day on something as important as backing up wasn't a major
burden.
But I suppose it's time to bite the bullet, so when I have time I'll
set up the following:
1. Determine the rsync command line I need to backup my data every
morning.
2. Once that's tested, script it and put an icon on my desktop so I can
run it with just a double-click.
3. Set up a directory structure to support 7-day or 31-day versioning.
4. Modify the rsync command to write differential backups to the daily
bins against a master copy.
5. Set up cron to run the process automatically.
Miles Teg over on the messageboard posted a heads-up about a scanner
with Linux support. When I had some scanner problems a couple months
ago, I decided the easiest way to solve them was to buy a new scanner
that supported Linux. Although my UMAX 3450U scanner was listed on the
SANE site as having complete support, it wasn't working properly. I
wasn't sure if the scanner itself was defective or if I had
configuration problems.
So I went to the NewEgg web site looking for a low-end scanner with
full SANE support. Incredibly, of the scores of scanners NewEgg
offered, only a couple had full SANE support, and the least expensive
of those cost nearly $500. After some more checking on scanner
manufacturer web sites, I concluded that, incredibly, there were almost
no current scanner models that were supported by Linux.
I thought about buying a used scanner or one of the Epson refurb models
that had full SANE support, but decided to wait and see. When
Miles/Greg mentioned that the Epson
Perfection 3490 was supported by
SANE, I did some further checking.
The SANE site lists this model as having "good" support with the
SnapScan backend, which "means the device is usable for day-to-day
work. Some rather exotic features may be missing."
That's sufficient. Better yet, the 3490 driver is under active
development. That model was first supported on 8/16/05, and had
features added on 11/13/05. So I ordered an Epson Perfection 3490
scanner from NewEgg yesterday. We'll see what happens.
13:05
- Thanks to Ron Morse, who mentioned that he uses KDar (KDE Disc
Archive) for backing up. I installed KDar and ran a quick test backup.
It's very much like any other backup application, allowing you to
include/exclude files and directories, enable/disable compression and
encryption, and so on. It writes copies of the data being backed up to
one or more .dar files, which can then be written to optical disc or
another removable storage medium. If the backup data is too large to
fit one disc, it splits the backup into multiple .dar files. I have it
set to split based on 4,400 MB writable DVDs, and it seems to work
fine. It's scriptable, so you can, for example, set it to create the
.dar archive file and then fire up K3b and write the archive to an
optical disc.
The only downside of KDar relative to what I'm doing now is that
recovering a file from backup requires a separate step to open the
archive rather than allowing me simply to read the desired file
directly from the optical disc. Still, that's not a major drawback, and
not a bad tradeoff for being able to use compression.
Wednesday,
7 December
2005
11:50
- A date that will live in infamy. And within less than four
years of all-out war, the United States had destroyed the Empire of
Japan, firebombed its cities, nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and
deposed, tried, and executed its leaders.
In contrast, it has now been more than four years since Islam attacked
the United States, killing thousands more civilians than died in the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. And yet the United States has done
essentially nothing to punish those responsible. With the exception of
Iraq, which had little or nothing to to with the attacks on 9/11/2001,
Islamic cities are untouched and Islamic leaders remain in power.
The United States is immensely more powerful now than it was in 1941,
in both relative terms and absolute terms, but our leaders have
abdicated their responsibility to protect us and to destroy those
who harm us or would harm us.
What we needed was George Patton. Unfortunately, what we had and have
is Elmer Fudd.
If you're running Linux and looking for a reasonably priced USB
scanner, the Epson Perfection 3490 looks like a good choice. UPS hasn't
delivered mine yet, but one of my readers has recently gotten his. I'll
post his comments for the benefit of anyone looking for a Linux scanner.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Epson Perfection 3490 scanner on Linux
Date: Tue, 06 Dec 2005 11:31:00 -0500
From: Rod Schaffter
To: Robert Bruce Thompson
Hi Bob,
I ordered one from New Egg yesterday too! I guess great minds run
in the same gutter. According to the tracking it's sitting in Hartford,
CT, so I expect it will come tomorrow. I'll keep you posted on
how it works with SuSE. I currently have SANE version 1.0.16-0
Actually, I'm using SuSE instead of Xandros largely because Xandros
wouldn't detect my HP 3400c at the time and it worked with SuSE.
Cheers,
Rod Schaffter
--
"If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if
we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught
of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance
with them." --Sir Karl Popper
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Epson Perfection 3490 scanner on Linux
Date: Tue, 06 Dec 2005 17:11:02 -0500
From: Rod Schaffter
To: Robert Bruce Thompson
Hi Bob,
The scanner came this afternoon-I'm glad I didn't spring for expedited
shipping!
Here's the poop (this is on SuSE 10.0-YMMV):
Bad News: Not recognised by SANE 1.0.16:
Good News: Epson has Linux driver available:
http://www.avasys.jp/english/linux_e/dl_scan.html
Bad News: It doesn't work with Kooka. iscan (the scan program included
in the above package) will only run as root unless some permissions are
changed-every time the machine is rebooted or the scanner plugged in!
The procedure is descibed in the manual. (Perhaps this could be due to
a conflict with SuSE's hotplug program)
Good News: It does work-even the transparency adapter with 35mm
negatives. It installs iscan as a GIMP plugin so you can directly
manipulate the image if you wish.
I'm continuing to play with it.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Epson Perfection 3490 scanner on Linux-update
Date: Wed, 07 Dec 2005 07:18:04 -0500
From: Rod Schaffter
To: Robert Bruce Thompson
Hi Bob,
I have gotten it working, and I think the problem is most likely
specific to SuSE 10.0's handling of USB devices. The fix was to
create a new file 51-scanner.conf in the /etc/resmgr.conf.d directory
containing the contents of 50-scanner.conf with the following line
appended:
add usb:vendor=0x04b8,product=0x0122 scanner
The seperate file keeps the SuSE configuration program YaST from
overwriting it.
Kooka still doesn't see it, but iscan is a nice program. It does
seem to be a little slow doing the final scan.
I'm doing my first podcast interview this afternoon at 5:30 p.m.
Pacific time, with fellow astronomer Landon Curt Noll. Jack Herrington,
the author of Podcasting Hacks, will
be the interviewer/moderator.
Frankly, I'm not real clear on what a podcast is or why it deserves a
special name. If I understand the concept, it's simply an audio
recording that's posted for streaming, download, or RSS transfer, and
can be listened to on a computer or transferred to a portable audio
player. I'm not sure why that qualifies as anything special or deserves
a name of its own.
Thursday,
8 December
2005
09:05
- I went over Tuesday afternoon to check out Mary's and Paul's
Xandros Linux box, which had been having problems. When I booted it, it
got to the point where it should have displayed the logon box, and just
hung. I restarted the system in safe video mode, and was able to log on
normally. At that point, it seemed likely that their Xandros
installation had gotten hosed somehow. They were still running Xandros
2.X, so I decided to bring the system home and do a full upgrade.
Mary and Paul both assured me that there were no important data files
on the drive, but I decided to do an upgrade installation rather than a
full bare-metal installation anyway, in an attempt to preserve their
bookmarks and so on. With the system set up here at home, I downloaded
the latest release of Xandros
3.0 Open Circulation Edition, burned it to a CD, stuck it in the
drive, and restarted the system. I chose the upgrade option, and off it
went, apparently normally. Until it got to 4% complete, when it hung.
Not good.
I should have learned my lesson by now, but I obviously haven't. When
we built this system, there was a special offer that included two
KingMax premium 256 MB PC3200 DIMMs at a very attractive bundle price.
I went for that, rather than spending $20 more to get Crucial memory.
And it was indeed the memory that was the problem. I swapped out the
two KingMax DIMMs for two Crucial DIMMs and the problems disappeared.
Unfortunately, the bad memory was not only causing hangs, but had
caused some data corruption, so the only option was a bare-metal
reinstall. Live and learn, as they say, or you don't live long.
11:46
- My email just went wonky. After my experience Monday, when I
lost some email that had arrived between Sunday morning and Monday
morning, I decided to change the account settings in Mozilla Mail. I
told it to leave messages on the server for seven days, with the idea
that if I ever again lost my local email I'd still be able to retrieve
it from the server.
That worked fine until a few minutes ago, when I checked my mail.
Although it had been only a few minutes since the last
check, Mozilla informed me that there were hundreds and hundreds
of new email messages, and promptly began downloading them. Sure
enough, they were all duplicates of messages that I'd already
downloaded. That was easy enough to recover from. My mail folders
display messages in the order they arrive, so all I had to do was open
each folder where new mail is stored, select all the "new" messages,
and delete them. That took all of a minute or two.
Still, it'd be nice to know why Mozilla Mail suddenly decided to
download every message from the server. Until I understand that, I've
changed my mail account settings again to delete mail as soon as it's
retrieved.
Hmmm. The Weather Channel web site says we'll get rain tonight with
snow showers tomorrow morning. Weather Underground says we'll have
sleet and freezing rain starting this evening and lasting overnight,
with accumulations of only a tenth of an inch or so. Both agree that
the chance of precipitation is 90% to 100% and that the overnight low
temperatures will be just below freezing.
I mistrust the weather weasels. I'll never forget the night, years ago
now, when all of the TV weather weasels were agreed that we'd get at
most 1" to 2" of snow overnight. We got 18". They periodically make
dire threats about severe weather that never materializes. So, at this
point, nothing would surprise me. We could get nothing or we could get
a full-blown ice storm. Either way, we'll be fine. We have
industrial-strength natural gas logs that when run on high produce
40,000 BTU/hour, enough to keep the whole house warm enough to avoid
freezing pipes and such, and enough to keep the den uncomfortably warm
even if outside temperatures are below 0°F. We have a gas hot water
heater, so we can even take showers if the power fails.
10:42
- We got a bit of icing overnight, but nothing major. When I
took the dogs out in the front yard a few minutes ago, I thought we
were having a sleet storm. The "sleet" was actually caused by the
bright sunlight melting the ice from tree branches.
Barbara loaded up last night for her Saturday trip. She's going over to
her parent's house straight from work today. She and her dad are
attending a Christmas party tonight with their golf buddies. She'll
stay there overnight and head out with her parents and sister at
oh-dark-thirty to drive over to Randleman, North Carolina. The tour bus
departs from there early Saturday morning, heading for Myrtle Beach,
South Carolina. They'll attend a Christmas play there, do some
shopping, and head back home late Saturday. They'll arrive back in
Winston-Salem around midnight, so Barbara is going to stay at her
sister's house Saturday night and come home Sunday morning.
That means it'll be wild women and parties for me and the dogs. Either
that, or I'll just work the whole time.
Several people have asked about the podcast interview I did the other
day. I have no idea when they'll have it available, but I'll post that
information here when it is.
Thanks to everyone who's sent me explanations of the podcasting
phenomenon. As I suspected, there's no good reason for the name.
There's nothing iPod-specific about it, and people were doing what
would become known as podcasts years before the iPod even shipped. I
remember listening to Jerry Pournelle's "podcasts" from Byte.com back
in 1998 or 1999.
It's back to work for me. The rest of this month is likely to be pretty
quiet around here. In addition to the holiday stuff, I have 12/31
deadlines and end-of-year business stuff to take care of. Posts will
likely be short and sporadic until the New Year.
Saturday,
10 December
2005
11:10
- The dogs just look at me, wondering where Barbara is. Last
night, we all went back to the bedroom. Both dogs jumped up on the bed,
and stayed there while I read for an hour or so. They were both on my
side of the bed, so I had to stretch out to read on Barbara's side of
the bed.
When I turned out the light, I expected Duncan to jump down and go to
sleep on his dog bed, as he usually does. Instead, Duncan stayed up on
the bed with me, and Malcolm jumped down and went to sleep on Duncan's
dog bed. I wouldn't have been surprised if Duncan had gone to sleep in
Malcolm's crate. The poor dogs were totally confused.
00:00
-
Copyright
© 1998,
1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 by Robert Bruce Thompson. All
Rights Reserved.
