Computer Tips -Tech Info

If you didn’t know, this has been a tumultuous week for clients of Westhost, my internet service provider. Their Primary data center is located in Utah and they share that space with a sister brand VPS.net. The datacenter is a Tier IV center managed by Consonus. Saturday afternoon there was a yearly fire equipment/alarm/suppression system […]

There’s a lot of buzz these days about “cloud computing”. You may be asking yourself just what IS cloud computing? The concept is that you are not as reliant on your personal computer, but your applications and data are kept somewhere in the internet “cloud”. So for instance, I use google calendars and gmail for […]

Microsoft Vista is now out, the next version of Windows, successor to XP. While Windows XP will continue to receive updates into 2014 there are many that might be eager to upgrade and move to the latest greatest. (Note to those: Service Pack one may be en route THIS calendar year, so unless you like […]

I’ve got to say, I haven’t spent ENOUGH time with rsync to really be fluent in how I could put it to use…. A week or so ago I was reading this list of essential Linux software by a guy that moved from Mac OS X to linux because he detested the DRM that was […]

Version 2.0.3 of OpenOffice.org has been released. It includes quite a few bugfixes, including three security related fixes. The security vulnerabilities were apparently found in an internal audit. One of the improvements in 2.0.3 is an integrated update check, to be able to check for available updates directly from within OpenOffice. I think this is […]

There are a lot of elements to a good disaster recovery strategy…. knowing where offsite backups are located, keeping the offsite backups fresh. Knowing where any ON-site backups are. Having a plan for quick access to replacement hardware. One that probably is easily overlooked is very low-tech. That’s a system log. I don’t know that […]

For several years now, I’ve used Mondorescue as a backup solution for those customers with a Linux server. It makes for a nice, easily scriptable backup that can go ahead and burn to disc, *(or tape or another pc….) My preferred way of doing this has been a full mondorescue backup to dvd (usually one […]

I’m writing this from the laptop. Having run Mandriva 2006 without any real significant bumps for a couple weeks I’ve come to a point where I’m ready to take the plunge on the desktop. The desktop is my primary workstation. The laptop get’s occasional light use and is the one I’m more likely to play […]

Linux.com is running an article on easy automated backups with a new program called sbackup. Sbackup is a product of Google’s summer of code and is a GUI to pick and choose what to backup and when to routinely back it up. Apparently the project was also sponsored by Ubuntu. (I’d expect integration into their […]

Newsforge has the third article in their series on Best Practices for the Linux Home Office. The main highlighs in this entry are RAID and backups and disaster recovery.    Send article as PDF