Entries posted in November 2013

So I recently mentioned that I stopped myself from registering all the domains, but I did aquire rsync.io.

Today I'll be moving my last few backups over to using it.

In terms of backups I'm pretty well covered; I have dumps of databases and I have filesystem dumps too. The only niggles are the "random" directories I want to backup from my home desktop.

My home desktop is too large to backup completely, but I do want to archive some of it:

• ~/Images/ - My archive of photos.
• ~/Books/ - My calibre library.
• ~/.bigv/ - My BigV details.
• etc.

In short I have a random assortment of directories I want to backup, with pretty much no rhyme or reason to it.

I've scripted the backup right now, using SSH keys + rsync. But it feels like a mess.

PS. Proving my inability to concentrate I couldn't even keep up with a daily blog for more than two days. Oops.

Tags: backups, domains, rsync | 6 comments

Recently I decided to set myself a big photography challenge. The three options which I discussed with a couple of people were:

• Photograph the front of every pub in the nearby area city-centre.
• Photograph ever plaque, monument, and statue in the city-centre.
• Photograph every gravestone and memorial bench in the city centre.

Ultimately I decided pubs would be most fun. Not least because you could do it every year or two, to see what changes occurred.

To make it more useful I decided to not only take the pictures, but to collect, and share, the meta-data too:

• Lat/Longditude GPS for each pub.
• Contact details for each pub.
• etc.

Today I spent an hour walking up Easter road, and down Leith Walk. I shot the outside of about 20 pubs, and then fiddled with the layout and organization of the images.

I'm reasonably happy with the result, but it remains obvious that I'm not a designer.

• http://edinburgh.io/

The data-set use to generate the site - which is perhaps the most interesting/useful part of the whole exercise to other people - is available online too:

• http://edinburgh.io/data

All the data, even the images, is stored on github for collaboration purposes. I'm not sure if folk will join in, but I can probably manage a few of the major thoroughfares every weekend indefinitely it will only take a couple of days to get "city-wide coverage", then the rest is gravy.

Tags: edinburgh.io, photography, projects | 9 comments

In brief:

• My partner and I had a hoot at the owl centre
• I created a toy script which accepts HTTP POSTS to make a ring-buffer of JSON objects:
  • https://github.com/skx/4096.js
  • This will replace two similar but non-identical servers I run.
• Tomorrow I have the day off work, as some visiting Finnish ladies are being tourists here in Edinburgh.
  • I will take the opportunity to photograph Edinburgh pubs as we pass by.

Tags: edinburgh.io, life, misc, photography | No comments

If this post is visible I should have migrated the following virtual machines to a new home:

• mail.steve.org.uk - SMTP, IMAP, & etc.
• www.steve.org.uk - And N other hosts.
• rsync.io - Offsite backups for local people.

These previously existed on a machine at Bytemark, running under screen and KVM. Now they exist upon a different Bytemark-rented host.

TODO: Move 4096.io, configure an auto-builder guest (I have a slaughter policy for that), and allocate a /48 so that I regain IPv6 support (/56 would do, I guess. I want a /64 for each guest.).

Tags: hosting, kvm | 2 comments

I've now completed all my KVM migrations. Moving my personal virtual machines from one host to another.

There were a few niggles, for example I didn't have a working IPv6 allocation at the time I moved things so I had to set that up post-migration.

I've also joined each of the hosts into a VPN which makes cross-guest communication secure and simple.

Finally I've overhauled my firewalls and service lists.

I installed a couple of extra guests, using libvirt and booting from the Debian ISO. The Debian installer continues to impress, though it did make me think I should overhaul my PXE setup at home.

It wouldn't be hard to have a Raspberry PI running as a TFTP + DHCP server. You could plug it into a network, reboot your desktop, and then have it boot into the imager. At the moment I run DHCP + TFTPD + etc on my main desktop, and that allows me to reimage any of the hosts in the flat easily, except itself obviously.

The last time I reinstalled this system I had to reconfigure DHCP + PXE + TFTP on another host. I think the next time I need to reinstall any system I'll "waste" an SD-card on an image-server host.

Finally I've recently read the Rick Cook Wizardy Series:

• Geeky developer gets transferred to a typical fantasy land:
  • Where magic works/exists.
  • There are dragons.
  • He writes a magic-compiler using FORTH to build primitives into bigger spells.

Fun idea. Horrible puns. Some of the books were too long, or left plot elements dangling, but on average they were more good than bad. Albeit a little predictable and "simple".

Tags: kvm, pi, random | No comments

Today was my last day working at Bytemark, and I found it a lot harder than expected.

For better or worse I finished earlier than expected; having been gradually removing my accounts and privileges over the past few weeks I'd revoked my OpenVPN key this morning.

Mid-afternoon my openvpn connection tried to renegotiate session keys, or similar, and failed. So I stopped work a few hours early. That meant I managed to avoid sending my "goodbye world" email, which is probably for the best - after all a lovely company, lovely people, and a good environment, what can you say besides things that are lovely?

I think I largely wrapped things up neatly, and I'm pleased that one of my photos is hanging on the office wall. (I look forward to seeing that actually, I've only rarely made canvas prints.)

The only other thing of note this week has been the sharp rise in blogspam I've detected. Black Friday alive and well, on the internets ..

Tags: blogspam, bytemark | No comments