Random Thoughts

While there are many options(cp, tar, simplelinuxbackup, fwbackups, rsync, unison, bacula, keep, karchive ... etc) for backing up Linux systems, there does not seem to be a consensus number one option. So, I went through the frustrating process of trying out a lot of options and found my number one. While the particular needs and intentions of specific systems ultimately determines the best backup tool, I went for the simplest solution for my simple problem. First, I don't need data compression since I have plenty of space on my HD. Plus, date compression consumes a lot of CPU which becomes a huge hustle when I am trying to do real work while performing my backups. Second, automatic/periodic/scheduled backups are not needed in my case because I will invoke the backup process whenever I plug in my external HD and am in the mood to perform backups. Third, I don't feel the need for file encryption. Fourth, I don't need incremental backups -- I simply want the latest copy ba

The 60GB disk on my laptop has become a huge limitation recently and instead of having to burn my movies onto DVDs regularly, I opted to shell out a whopping $65 (thanks to a BestBuy sale and $25 coupon) to buy a 120GB external mini-hard drive. It is not only tiny (weighing 7.2 oz) but it does not require an external power source as it can simply plug into my laptop's USB port. While this hard drive does come with a lot of cool features like one-touch backups and file encryption for Windows and Macs, one would be lucky to just get it to work for Linux. For one, it comes formatted in NTFS format and is not writable initially. I will describe how I got it to work below. For starters, here are some specs of my system: Pentium M 1.5MHz Banias, 60GB HD, 768MB DDR SDRAM, Linux version 2.6.20-15-generic (gcc version 4.1.2 (Ubuntu 4.1.2-0ubuntu4)) #2 SMP Sun Apr 15 07:36:31 UTC 2007 First, power up the external HD simply by plugging it into your computer. Most recent Linux sy

I have been playing with C++ and surely run into compilations that result in segmentation faults. Instead of blindly searching for the source of these errors, I decided to learn a little more about the GNU debugger (gdb). Note that you would need to find the proper compilation flag to be able to debug your code with a certain debugger. For example, I added '-ggdb' flag to g++ in order to debug my code with gdb. ... Was gonna write a tutorial myself, but I will instead just give relevant links to some useful pages. Debugging Under Unix: gdb Tutorial The DDD debugger is supposed to be good. Will report on it soon.