A typical example of this would be if I have a database server, and on this happy database server I have a crontab entry that creates a nightly snapshot of all the databases and then runs a little script to scp them all over to a backup server somewhere.

On first impressions, this sounds fine. You’ve got a production database server. You’ve got a remote backup server. You’ve got nightly jobs that run. Awesome! Well protected!

*bzzzzzz* You’re protected from innocent hardware failure, sure, but what happens when someone manages to compromise your database server and login? Regardless of their motivation, if they can read your nightly backup script, you are unbelievably screwed. They’re now not only pwning your production database server, but they have access to your remote backup server too and any historical data might as well be kissed good bye.

I wanted to be defensive and consider this scenario a “when” and not an “if”. My solution is nothing new, but it’s something I don’t see suggested much: Make the backup server PULL from the production database server using private/public ssh keys . For example: backup server has crontab entries that tell it to login to your production systems and copy the same databases you were previously telling the production servers to worry about. Also you can limit any commands the backup user’s login is allowed to issue on the production side. The backup server should also be behind a firewall, on a private network, isolated away from the outside world except for outbound connections in the direction of the production server.

Now not only do you have a happy database, you have an isolated backup server with absolutely no references to where or how the backups are stored.

An added benefit is that if you need to deploy any new production servers, all of their backup requirements can be centralized instead of adding multiple crontab entries to multiple new server at each deployment state. (It’s also a pain if your backup strategy changes greatly as you’d have to maintain many distributed references to your backup infrastructure.)

Obviously this is primarily for smaller scale systems. If you’re running Oracle 10g and have the infrastructure to support distributed RAID arrays full of redundant backups with offline tape libraries, well you’re probably here by accident then. However, if you’re running PostgreSQL or MySQL on a VPS somewhere, I hope this has been thought provoking at the least.

(Later I’ll post some actual How To code/commands to implement this.)

XnView

Free image browser/organizer with every feature of ACDSee and Adobe Bridge and many more. Just look at the operating systems it runs on: Windows, MacOS X, Linux x86, Linux ppc, FreeBSD x86, OpenBSD x86, NetBSD x86, Solaris sparc, Solaris x86, Irix mips, HP-UX, AIX – that’s dedication right there. I really do use this tool every single day, it’s simply that amazing. The Windows Shell extension alone is wonderful – instant thumbnail on the right-click menu of any supported file type. I don’t know why more people aren’t aware of this tool.
http://www.xnview.com/

CloneSpy

This brilliant tool lets you find (and automatically delete, if you wish) duplicate files in 2 or more locations on your system. You can do a full byte-for-byte compare, or simply rely on the filenames. You can also designate “pools” so only files listed in say Pool 2 will have the duplicate files deleted, should you wish to maintain any copies found in Pool 1 for example. A truly invaluable tool that’s saved me many, many hours of time and vast quantities of disk space!
http://www.clonespy.com/

RED (Remove Empty Directories)

This tool is fairly similar in function to CloneSpy above, except it works on empty directories and/or empty files. You specify a path for it to scan and it quickly goes through and presents a color-coordinated set of empty directories which it will happily remove with a confirmation click. It’s also smart enough to remove parent directories if after deleting empty sub-directories, said parent is also now entirely empty.
http://www.jonasjohn.de/lab/red.htm

iTunes has some awesome features, but some odd deficiencies.

One such is the inability to build a Smart Playlist that contains ONLY music, or ONLY TV shows for example.

Although a handy solution is within your grasp. A useful feature of these Smart Playlists is to read OTHER playlists, so basically you create a big ol’ big list that excludes -for example- all TV, Movies, Podcasts, etc. then include that in your Music-only playlists going forward.

A handy guide explaining the aformentioned music-only base playlist:
http://www.43folders.com/2006/11/09/music-only-playlists/

Some other excellent iTunes wrangling tips of all varieties:
http://www.43folders.com/2006/11/10/smart-playlists-for-packrats/

Good luck and god speed!

Teasing details and a beta email signup available at: Scrybe site

Having recently had yet another hard drive decide to begin spewing bad sectors, I went on the hunt for recovery information for the overly complicated LVM2 system I was running. The immediate prospect of having to mirror the entire ~2TB filesystem before being able to run a repair made my head hurt. After acquiring a replacement disk for the 1 in poor health, I was tempted to try the standard Linux command ‘dd’ with some ignore errors and pad blocks options, but then I happend to stumble upon TestDisk which sounded extremely versatile and useful. However, what I was most impressed with was their extremely informative MediaWiki-based site and in particular, the Damaged Hard Disk area with references to two different versions of ‘dd rescue’ tools, in particular Antonio Diaz’s ddrescue utility. Essentially after you tell it the bad disk, and somewhere (file or other disk) to write the data, it’s fully automated. If you make sure to use the logfile feature, it can even resume and pick-up where it left off if your recovery process is interrupted for any reason.

If you’ve had hard disk/CD/DVD failures for whatever reason, I strongly suggest looking at the TestDisk page as it runs across >6 operating systems and supports >17 different filesystems derivations – oh and their site is very helpful. Have at it!

Although MediaCentral is quite text-based for navigation, its presentation is definitely a lot sharper and more refined than any of the others. CenterStage is intersting and has a lot of potential, but better be careful not to ‘over utilize’ available space. It’s definitely the most mature of the projects. My main gripe is that if I’m browsing a bunch of movie covers (which BackStage – the CenterStage backend component sucsessfully downloaded for me), why do I need a text title underneath them? I don’t; it simply wastes space. Also the cover browsing section seems awfully small, but as I didn’t poke too deeply, one might be able to turn off the preview area to the right (that would be handy). iTheatre is at RC1 currently and has quite a few pieces of missing functionality, but could be nice although is heavily text-based like MediaCentral. CoverFlow is purely for browsing your music but it is such a simple, obvious UI that it merits mentioning. Hopefully its ideas can be intergrated into a more encompassing media browser.

MediaCentral
(lg, xl)

CenterStage
(lg, xl)

iTheatre
(lg, xl)

CoverFlow
(lg, xl)

You’ll need to go and get plink.exe from PuTTY, but that’s about it.

To open the tunnel, run the following:

NOTE: The first time you run this, do not include the “-batch” parameter or the “sleep 30″ command on the end because you have to manually accept the SSH server’s key so it gets added to your Windows registry for future use, and then type “exit” to disconnect.

For example, the command looks like this for me:

"sleep 30" is required (including quotes) as this keeps the channel open for 30 seconds, which should be long enough for you to open your RDP connection with 127.0.0.2:3390 as the server address.

Use the following command to open your RDP connection from a batch file, or the Start->Run dialog (the parameters in bold are for screen Width and Height, and obviously optional):

Here’s a screenshot of what the plink.exe command looks like. On the last line, it’s indicating that it has just run the sleep 30 command and then it sits waiting for the open port forwarding to be used:

To simplify all of this, I cleaned-up a VBS script I found that prompts for all of the parameters in turn so you don’t have to keep them saved in an insecure batch file or anything. Grab a copy of rdp_connect.vbs and put it in the same directory as plink.exe and after connecting, it’ll automatically run the RDP client and attempt to connect for you. To create a shortcut to this script, you’ll want to prefix it with the wscript command as simply double-clicking a .vbs file does nothing but open a text editor (not entirely helpful really).

Ok, what everyone has to remember is that the User Interface of whatever is presenting you with your >1,000 DVD library has to not just be good, but has to be GREAT. The only GREAT interface I’ve found is from Kaleidascape but sadly that’s only inside their $20k media server (nuts!). In looking at the Niveus and Escient screenshots, they look like rejected 80s MTV visuals… Don’t even get me started on MythTV, Meedio, DVD Lobby or the like; goodness.

Although not leaps and bounds better, I am very happy with Xbox running Xbox Media Center. I have my 2TB library ripped to my file-server and the Xbox Media Center software is by far the most friendly and elegant for access. However, even this isn’t a match to the Kaleidascape UIs. Frankly, I’ve given-up and settled for writing my own interface in Flex. Not sure when it’ll be released, but it’ll definitely be free when it’s done.

Just wanted to add my thoughts to this debate in the hopes of tempering all these new product announcements lately and remind people that a >1,000 DVD library is really pretty useless when you can only see ~9-12 covers on screen at a time… Oh and the Sony XL-1 Digital Living System does look quite impressive, but is still bound by the Microsoft MCE2005 limitations. Sony did have some UI screenshots of a different media server but I can’t seem to locate them right now – more on that later.

“SessionSaver restores your browser -exactly- as you left it, every startup, every time. Not even a crash will phase it. Windows, tabs, even things you were typing — they’re all saved. Use the menu to add + remove sessions; right, shift, or middle-clicking will delete. “Simple mode” for peace of mind, or “Expert mode” for advanced flexibility. Just Click. Install. Rad.

Added TextSaver: everything you type, saved (even in frames). Added RemoteSync: session-syncing between browsers (syncs Adblock, too). Added intelligent postData-restore. Added various patches + bugfixes, per discussion in the official support thread.”