Tue, 02 Dec 2008

release critical bug stats

For those wondering about the statistics about the statistics about the release critical bugs in the upcoming release of Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 Lenny... well... first I forget them, and then thought there might be more people interested in them than the readers of planet.

So they are now a part of the Debian Project News, so if you haven't done so, yet: Go and subscribe to the debian-news mailings list :)

postet at 21:57 into [Debian] permanent link

Fri, 21 Nov 2008

Dear Lazyweb,

I have several Linux systems (mostly workstations) which are in desperate need of a backup solution. However the "official" backup server runs Windows 2003. It's out of a questions to migrate that to a better system.

Now I'm wondering about a good backup strategy... and am failing to find a working software. Constraints: I want' to have weekly full backups and daily incremental backups. I would like to have a central service, where I can see if some machines haven't been backed up for some time (ideally I would like to get a mail, if a machine hasn't been backed up for some time). It would be nice if I didn't need to install any special software on the systems to be backed up; but if it can't be done otherwise so be it.

I have the resources to set up an additional Linux systems, but due to various circumstances the hard discs I can use in that machine are not very reliable. Therefore backups must end on the Windows system; either directly or via cifs / network share.

So far I have looked at BackupPC which seems very nice, but depends on a file system supporting hard links. Which isn't the case here :(

Bacula seems a bit overkill, but better to much functionality than missing functionality ;) However, Bacula needs a Database, and I wouldn't know where to set up that. As said, the local Linux system which would run the backup server might have a disc crash, therefore the database should run somewhere else. Bacula may use SQLite as database; where I could store the SQLite files on the Windows server via network share, however the Bacla Documentation doesn't recommend using SQLite on a production environment.

I looked at amanda, too; but honestly I didn't understood the documentation very well :(

So much for the first ideas... Any good pointers where I should go next? I know, it's a quiet unusual scenario, but there must be some kind of solution, mustn't it?

postet at 22:07 into [Debian] permanent link

Tue, 04 Nov 2008

Notebooks

If notebooks decide to become a brick, they should do it with a big "puff" instead failing silently (and suddenly).

That would be the fourth brick we have lying around here :(

postet at 22:31 into [Debian] permanent link

Mon, 03 Nov 2008

release critical bug stats

The unofficial rc bug thingy currently lists:

• 144 rc Bugs affecting the next stable release Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 Lenny:
  • 61 Bugs of them, fixed in the unstable branch Sid
  • 83 Bugs open in both, Lenny and Sid of these:
    • 10 marked as pending
    • 25 have already a patch
    • 10 have been reported multiple times

Ignoring bugs, which are marked pending, have a patch, have been reported multiple times or concern packages in contrib or non-free, that leaves 43 release critical bugs.

Again a big improvement compared to the numbers of last week. Thanks for everyone helping!

However 28 of them have been reported more than 30 days ago; maybe they are quite complicated, so please pay special attention to them.

postet at 23:17 into [Debian] permanent link

Dear Lazyweb,

I use Icedove / Thunderbird for nearly all of my daily mail business. I use it to read blogs, too. However, since I work from different computers, on my mails, I'm slightly annoyed since it seems not possible to synchronize several important settings in an easy way.

Is it somehow possible to synchronise:

• address book
• Read post of the subscribed blogs
• Installed extensions

I rely heavily on the automatic completion of e-mail addresses and like, that Thunderbird automatically adds recipients of mails I send to an address book for later use. However it seems to be not possible to share these entries between several computers.

Similar to subscribed blogs. I'm subscribed to some blogs on different computers. However I need to "synchronize" which posts I already read by hand.

Last, not least: From time to time I find and install a new extension to Thunderbird, which I install on one computer. And later forget to install the very same extension on the other computers :(

Yes, technically I could solve these problems myself. E.g. by using the rss2mail script to read blogs via my imap server, or by using some kind of version control for my Thunderbird settings. But that seems kind of ugly to me. Isn't there a better way?

postet at 11:00 into [Debian] permanent link