Recently in Tech Category
Corrupted Time Machine backups; zfs to the rescue
Since upgrading to OS X Lion, I've been getting corrupted Time Machine backups now and again, where OS X declares it must erase the entire backup volume and start again. Apparently this is not uncommon. Erasing the backup volume means the entire backup history is lost, which is not nice at all.
Well, my Time Machine volume is actually a network share, hosted by my trusty BSD server at home. The filesystem used on the server is zfs and as such, supports its own built-in backup scheme: snapshots. The server is configured to create and maintain daily snapshots of the file system where the Time Machine backups are stored (up to one week's worth). Here is how zfs comes to the rescue: when OS X throws up the I'm going to eat your Time Machine backup and start over error, I simply say Thank you, but no. Then I
- Unmount the Time Machine volume in OS X:
sudo umount /Volumes/TimeMachine - Rollback to a recent zfs snapshot on the server:
zfs rollback timemachine@daily.0 - Choose Back up now from the Time Machine menu
In this way I might have lost the most recent Time Machine backup, but not all backups. Thank you, zfs, and shame on you, Time Machine.
Top o' the charts
I've been working on the iOS Zinio magazine reader application for over 2 years now, and it's been quite a ride launching the app first for iPhone, then iPad, and then completing a major overhaul with in-app purchasing in the 2.0 release. It is gratifying to have worked on an app used by so many people.
Refinement of automount script for LUKS encrypted disk image
In my previous post I showed an automount script for mounting a LUKS encrypted disk image as a loop device. The script was designed to always mount the same loop device, e.g. /dev/loop0. This prevented it from being able to mount multiple disk images, so with some tweaks I refined the script to use any available loop device and thus support multiple disk images.
Configuring automount for LUKS encrypted disk image on SMB share
In my previous post, I detailed how I set up an LUKS-encrypted filesystem on a loop device (a.k.a. sparse disk image file). To make automated backups easier and not have to add commands in my backup script to handle the mounting and unmounting of the disk image, I set up automount to:
- Mount the SMB share when accessing the
/cifsdirectory - Attach a loop device and set up LUKS filesystem access when accessing the
/encrypteddirectory
Encrypted Backup of RHEL 5 system to SMB network share
I purchased the LaCie NAS for backups of the various computers running around at home: a Mac desktop, a Mac laptop, and a Linux server. For the Macs they can just use Time Machine to backup to the NAS, which broadcasts itself as a Time Machine-capable server. For the Linux server, however, it's not so simple.
Taming the LaCie 2big Network NAS
A little while ago I bought a LaCie 2big Network server to use for backups and storage. The drive is simple to use, but lacks the ability for the internal hard drives to "sleep" -- that is, spin down when not in use after a period of time. That's pretty annoying because the drive makes noise and wastes power while running, keeping the disks spinning. I decided I had to figure out a way to tame this little server.
m^2 / 2008
My friend Brahm did it so I was inspired to go fer it, too. And hey, why not do a little design freshy-up along the way? So here it is: m2 / 2008. A bit lighter, a bit more nostalgic. Inspiration came from my ever-growing collection of Moleskine notebooks, which I use for day-to-day note taking (work or otherwise). The doodles that appear between entries are scans I took from my notes.
There are still little missing pieces and things might not all be working... but I will just have to fix those things as I stumble on them.
TidBits
For the longest time I've used an old FileMaker database to store login and password information to all the various things in my life that require such information. Mostly I needed this because I have a terrible memory for such things. But working with the ol' FileMaker has been a pain, and I had plans for some time to create a web-based database to manage this data.
Well, after a couple of weeks of late night hacking... TidBits came into being. Ye ol' FileMaker database, may she rest in peace.
Quite possibly the dumbest error message ever
"Transaction (Process ID 97) was deadlocked on lock resources with another process and has been chosen as the deadlock victim. Rerun the transaction."
It sounds like a line from Half-Life! This is from the "Voted New Zealand Best Online Maps 2005" website, www.wises.co.nz. I find the site works about 50% if the time, if you're lucky. Google Maps, where are you?
msqr.us: Death, and Resurrection
Minette and I ran off into the bear-infested wilds of Kings Canyon last week, and although we made it safely (but did have close encounters of the bear kind!) the morning after we returned I got up only to notice a strange sound, not unlike a bear snorting, coming from the office.