Gregg's Nearly Interminable Adventures in Linux Land

[Terisa de morgan]

Gregg, I think having ALL the documents in a cloud-sync folder is not a very good idea. It's very good if everything goes well but, if there's a problem, you would lose your only copy (my paranoia at work ). Perhaps it would be a good idea to have a Copy directory with all the files, but I would have an additional directory where I would make my edit, and later I would synchronize it with the Copy folder.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

Is there anything to that or are they just paranoid?

They are just paranoid.

Paranoia is a defense mechanism. What the clinical paranoid is really afraid of, on a level they can't consciously admit to, is that they aren't important, don't matter, and nobody cares about them.

If you can buy into a paranoid fantasy, hey, you're important! You matter! Someone cares enough about you to be after you.

I've had the occasional interchange with people elsewhere convinced Microsoft is in league with the NSA and left back doors in Windows so the NSA could snoop on their PC. All I can say is "You wish you were important enough that anyone at the NSA could be bothered to snoop on your PC."

A lot of the current debate about privacy and security online reduces to that sort of concern, and the underlying emotion is "I feel helpless, powerless, and not in control of my own life."

I do not share that that concern, and have the ability to be anonymous on the occasions where it seems needed. It usually isn't.
______
Dennis

[eschwartz]

Well, I like being anonymous to the ad networks, they do consider me important every bit helps.
So... I installed a few key Firefox plugins and forgot about them. Speeds up my internet too, now that I'm not loading a bajillion ad scripts (I wonder how much the plugin slows me down in turn? )

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

Thanks eschwatz. That was super-helpful.

So, say I combine my two Documents folders (one from each computer) into the Copy folder. Then I have all my documents there combined in my Copy folder. Then I delete (or 'cut and paste,' whatever) my Document folders that are not in the Copy folder on both computers?

If so, that makes me nervous. What if Copy.com screws up? Their TOS is all about 'we are not responsible if you lose data.'

Do you think it's safe?

I like the idea. No, I love the idea of having everything in the Copy folder. It's like having both computers in one place. But it's scary.

Do you think rsync and stuff like Deja Dup are over my head or more than I need?

And for back-up are there any that are free and simple (or maybe I should just stay with Copy.com)?

Here's all these Linux backup things:

http://www.linuxlinks.com/article/20...03/Backup.html

One of them should work, don't you think?

Anything on this list should be good: http://www.nuxified.org/blog/easy-li...-functionality
Keep in mind -- bash-scripting solutions may not be worth the time to deal with, not everyone is required to have command-line foo. But if you can, it gives a heck of a lot of control.
You will probably feel better with a pre-packaged GUI.


Backups are always good. They cannot hurt, and may help.

Having multiple methods is good, you can use Copy.com/Dropbox/SpiderOak/others to make your files available everywhere, and preserved against sudden destruction... while at the same time using a program similar to Apple's Time Machine to protect yourself from accidental deletion/bad modifications, as well as insurance against Copy messing up.

Redundant backups are an important concept in keeping data safe from accidents, to wit, there is no such thing as redundant -- it is all useful.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Well, I like being anonymous to the ad networks, they do consider me important every bit helps.
So... I installed a few key Firefox plugins and forgot about them. Speeds up my internet too, now that I'm not loading a bajillion ad scripts (I wonder how much the plugin slows me down in turn? )

I'm not fanatical about blocking ads, and don't especially care about being tracked. The tracking is done by advertisers who want to better understand my interests and have a better idea of what they might be able to sell me.

Fine by me. Like everyone else, I buy goods and services, and advertising is one way I discover stuff I might wish to buy. The better targeted the pitch is, the less time I spend separating wheat from chaff.

I installed ad blocking in the first place simply to cut down clutter and make various sites I visited more readable. What I did previously was use a Firefox extension called Stylish. Stylish lets you run arbitrary CSS (called UserStyles) based on the site you are viewing. I used Stylish to run a CSS style called Filterset P. Filterset P is under the hood in things like AdBlock Plus. It defines a long list of ad servers and simply doesn't display content fetched from them. AdBlock Plus uses JavaScript to look for things to block as well, but I didn't want the additional overhead.

Currently, I run a product called uBlock that does things similar to AdBlock but claims less overhead.

I also have the NoScript extension installed, which blocks scripting unless the site is in a user maintained whitelist.

Browsing here is quick, thank you. Part of that is a 100 mbit/sec broadband connection. The other is that in Windows, I put the Firefox profile and cache on a ramdisk. My desktop has a quad-core 2.4ghz Xeon CPU and 8GB RAM, dual booting Win7 Pro and Ubuntu 14.04. With 8GB RAM I can afford to carve out a slice for a ramdisk (especially since I've never seen physical memory usage above 40%.) I found an open source 64bit Windows ramdisk driver, so there's a 512MB ramdisk seen as Z:. The Firefox profile is stored in a zip file, and unzipped to the ramdisk by a boot script when Windows loads. A shutdown script zips it back to catch changes when Windows is shutdown/rebooted. An entry in the FF profile.ini file points to the profile on the ramdisk, and is run by "firefox -p ramdisk". An entry in the Firefox preferences tells it to put the cache on the ramdisk, That's separate from the profile, and I don't try to preserve it across boots.

Speeds things up a treat.
______
Dennis

[eschwartz]

Ah, if I had enough memory to spare for a ramdisk... sadly, I would soon run out of memory.

It is more the very idea of spending processor time focused on a bunch of worthless ads -- who do they think they are, charging me (microseconds) in order to give me bad stuff? And I've never seen one that actually made me want to buy something I wasn't already planning on buying.

Any advertiser that has never heard of the Acceptable Ads initiative, IMO, does not deserve to know and make money off of me.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

It is more the very idea of spending processor time focused on a bunch of worthless ads -- who do they think they are, charging me (microseconds) in order to give me bad stuff?

Bear in mind that your processor spends most time in an idle loop waiting for I/O in any case.

And the processor time in the browser is spent on fetching and displaying content. What that content might be is irrelevant.

And I've never seen one that actually made me want to buy something I wasn't already planning on buying.

So how do you find out about stuff you plan to buy?

I've never made a purchase based solely on an online ad, but have noted things of potential interest to look into further later.

Any advertiser that has never heard of the Acceptable Ads initiative, IMO, does not deserve to know and make money off of me.

That will be almost all advertisers. What would bring it to their attention?

The smarter ones will likely be in compliance because they want the advertising to sell, and intrusive, in-your-face ads don't.
______
Dennis

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

Gregg, I think having ALL the documents in a cloud-sync folder is not a very good idea. It's very good if everything goes well but, if there's a problem, you would lose your only copy (my paranoia at work ). Perhaps it would be a good idea to have a Copy directory with all the files, but I would have an additional directory where I would make my edit, and later I would synchronize it with the Copy folder.

Yeah, Terisa. That's what made me nervous too.

So I'm trying to visualize your suggestion. Have the Copy directory with all the files, but then have an exact duplicate of the Copy folder where I would make the edit and then copy and paste that (is that what you mean by synchronize?) into the Copy directory?

I don't know. I tried it on a small scale. It worked when I added something to a text file, but when I deleted a photo, the photo still showed up in the Copy folder.

Maybe I should just keep everything in the Copy folder and anything I think is super important I can save to Google Drive or a USB flash drive.

Thanks.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Anything on this list should be good: http://www.nuxified.org/blog/easy-li...-functionality
Keep in mind -- bash-scripting solutions may not be worth the time to deal with, not everyone is required to have command-line foo. But if you can, it gives a heck of a lot of control.
You will probably feel better with a pre-packaged GUI.


Backups are always good. They cannot hurt, and may help.

Having multiple methods is good, you can use Copy.com/Dropbox/SpiderOak/others to make your files available everywhere, and preserved against sudden destruction... while at the same time using a program similar to Apple's Time Machine to protect yourself from accidental deletion/bad modifications, as well as insurance against Copy messing up.

Redundant backups are an important concept in keeping data safe from accidents, to wit, there is no such thing as redundant -- it is all useful.

Hey thanks for the new list. I liked Cronopete. I like it because I can backup to a flashdrive. I'm assuming I'm supposed to use one of those commands to get it, but which one would I use--the ppa or git one?

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

Yeah, Terisa. That's what made me nervous too.

So I'm trying to visualize your suggestion. Have the Copy directory with all the files, but then have an exact duplicate of the Copy folder where I would make the edit and then copy and paste that (is that what you mean by synchronize?) into the Copy directory?

I don't know. I tried it on a small scale. It worked when I added something to a text file, but when I deleted a photo, the photo still showed up in the Copy folder.

Maybe I should just keep everything in the Copy folder and anything I think is super important I can save to Google Drive or a USB flash drive.

Thanks.

I don't do it manually, I use a sync tool (or a rsync, in Linux Land), so it replicates add/update/delete in the Copy folder.

[eschwartz]

Add the PPA to your Software Center.

The git repository is for people who like compiling the software themselves.

Reminder: Adding a personal package archive (PPA) is a simple matter of:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rastersoft-gmail/cronopetedev
sudo apt-get update

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

I don't do it manually, I use a sync tool (or a rsync, in Linux Land), so it replicates add/update/delete in the Copy folder.

Thanks Terisa. That sounds simple but when I went to check out rsync it looked pretty complicated. I'll check into it further.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by Gregg Bell

Thanks Terisa. That sounds simple but when I went to check out rsync it looked pretty complicated. I'll check into it further.

Yes, I agree with you that rsync is complicated (for me, at least), perhaps you can find some shell to simplify it.

[Gregg Bell]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Add the PPA to your Software Center.

The git repository is for people who like compiling the software themselves.

Reminder: Adding a personal package archive (PPA) is a simple matter of:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rastersoft-gmail/cronopetedev
sudo apt-get update

Thanks eschwartz. It's getting a little complicated though in that there seems to be so many choices.

I like your redundant theory: add Drobox and SpiderOak. But then would I just be putting the Copy folder into Dropbox's and SpiderOak's versions of the Copy folder? (Once again, I'm having a hard time getting my head around this stuff).

And Terisa's method (copy.com and rsync) sounds simple but rysnc seemed pretty daunting.

And a friend is suggesting I use CrashPlan.

It's all good stuff. But at times I wonder if I'm overcomplicating stuff.

Like with Copy.com. I've got my data in the Copy cloud. Okay, the Copy cloud evaporates. Fine I've still got the Copy folder in both computers, right?

Or one computer crashes AND the Copy cloud evaporates. I've still got the Copy folder in the other computer, right?

So, what the hell, what are the odds of the Copy cloud and BOTH computers crashing?

[eschwartz]

Syncing itself is simple, certain tools that do it are not.

rsync is a tool for people who write scripts. You may feel a lot more comfortable with e.g. cronopete, or BackInTime which is powered by rsync under the hood.


Everything depends on how comfortable you are relying on a certain level of security... but I would advise storing all files in one cloud storage provider, and including that folder in a snapshotted backup program like cronopete or anything else on the list I linked before.

Chielfy, the backups are there to save you if you accidentally delete something and don't notice for a while, or files get corrupted.
Cloud Storage will sync the corrupted version to everywhere!
It happens.


Someone who is very careful about his data should make doubly or triply redundant backups. Not everyone is careful, and very often they escape accidental disaster. Sometimes things happen.