Future of fwbackups: What features do you like?

  • 1 min read

    • I've been thinking about the future of fwbackups, and the engines are causing me a bit of trouble. TimeVault is pretty cool and I'd like to implement something similar, but to do that I have to scrap the tar and tar+gz engines. I could also forget the TimeVault-like features for now and implement incremental backups. So, what do you think? I've got a poll running so you can vote for your preferred option on the left.

    On another note, 1.43.2rc1 will include a minimize to system tray function so that fwbackups can stay in the tray as an applet :)

Welcome to the Matrix.

  • 2 min read

    • I like the Matrix trilogy more every time I watch it... There's some pretty interesting ideas in the movie. With the capabilities of technology growing every day, I don't believe we are going to be imprisoned by machines anytime soon but I do believe that the idea of a computer-generated "reality" will become, well, a reality pretty soon.

    What is real? It's going to be interesting to see how reality (both the sense of the word's meaning and the experiences we all retain from this "reality"), will change. If computers can interact with the nervous system, how will we be able to tell the difference between the current and computer-projected realities? In theory, the two would be indistinguishable and as with all other digital technology, chances are the digital projection of reality would be even better than the real thing. Either way, linking human brains to machines is going to bring about both new possibilities and vulnerabilities... Ad-hock networks of brains would be something very cool - imagine swapping digitized memories, complete with a sense of smell, touch, etc that you could replay any number of times. Work experience/skills could be transferred as well, which would make education easier and quicker. The gaming industry would be revolutionalized... You wouldn't play games anymore, you'd experience them. Interact with them.

    On the other hand, I bet it won't be long before brain-malware (brain32.mydoom O_o) appears too. But that's a whole other topic...

Presto: Speed up your updates and save bandwidth

  • 2 min read

    • Need more help or want to ask a question? Discuss this topic here.

    A little background information

    Delta RPMs (DRPMs) are very similar to binary (regular) RPMs. The main difference is that DRPMs contain only the changes between two versions of an RPM package. This allows you to do full updates in a lot less time - Instead of downloading a full 10MB for an update where only 50kb of content changed, for example, you can now download only that 50kb of change and apply it to your system.

    Not only will you save on bandwidth since you're only downloading in the changes in a package, but you'll also cut down on the time it takes to download and apply the packages.

    Presto is a project which brings deltarpm and yum together; In other words, letting you use yum to apply DRPMs.

    Installing yum-presto

    The first step toward setting up Presto is installing the yum plugin:

    yum -y install yum-presto

    Configure the Updates repository

    Next, we need to configure your updates repository to download deltarpm packages instead of the full ones. In the /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo file you'll find two lines that looks like this in the [updates] section:

    #baseurl=http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/updates/$releasever/$basearch/
    mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=updates-released-fX&arch=$basearch

    Add a pound character to the start of the mirrorlist line so that it looks like this:

    #baseurl=http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/updates/$releasever/$basearch/
    #mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=updates-released-fX&arch=$basearch

    Finally, add a new line just under the "#mirrorlist=" line we just edited:

    mirrorlist=http://presto-mirrors.anmar.eu.org/mirrorlist?repo=updates-released-f$releasever&arch=$basearch

    The pound sign makes Yum ignore the line that it's on, so essentially we're telling yum to ignore the base repository and any mirrors. The line which was added tells yum to use the presto-enabled mirrors instead.

    That's it! Now run you can use yum or yumex as normal and benefit from the advantages of deltarpms.
     
    Need more help or want to ask a question? Discuss this topic here.

Presto: Speed up your updates and save bandwidth

  • 2 min read
    • Prestro is a new project that bridges the gap between deltarpm and yum. Now only will using yum-presto save you lots of bandwidth, but it will cut down on the time it takes to perform updates!

    Need more help or want to ask a question? Discuss this topic here.

    A little background information

    Delta RPMs (DRPMs) are very similar to binary (regular) RPMs. The main difference is that DRPMs contain only the changes between two versions of an RPM package. This allows you to do full updates in a lot less time - Instead of downloading a full 10MB for an update where only 50kb of content changed, for example, you can now download only that 50kb of change and apply it to your system.

    Not only will you save on bandwidth since you're only downloading in the changes in a package, but you'll also cut down on the time it takes to download and apply the packages.

    Presto is a project which brings deltarpm and yum together; In other words, letting you use yum to apply DRPMs.

    Installing yum-presto

    The first step toward setting up Presto is installing the yum plugin:

    yum -y install yum-presto

    Configure the Updates repository

    Next, we need to configure your updates repository to download deltarpm packages instead of the full ones. In the /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo file you'll find two lines that looks like this in the [updates] section:

    #baseurl=http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/updates/$releasever/$basearch/
    mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=updates-released-fX&arch=$basearch

    Add a pound character to the start of the mirrorlist line so that it looks like this:

    #baseurl=http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/updates/$releasever/$basearch/
    #mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=updates-released-fX&arch=$basearch

    Finally, add a new line just under the "#mirrorlist=" line we just edited:

    mirrorlist=http://presto-mirrors.anmar.eu.org/mirrorlist?repo=updates-released-f$releasever&arch=$basearch

    The pound sign makes Yum ignore the line that it's on, so essentially we're telling yum to ignore the base repository and any mirrors. The line which was added tells yum to use the presto-enabled mirrors instead.

     
    That's it! Now run you can use yum or yumex as normal and benefit from the advantages of deltarpms.
     
    Need more help or want to ask a question? Discuss this topic here.

Presto: Speed up your updates and save bandwidth

  • 2 min read

    • Need more help or want to ask a question? Discuss this topic here.

    A little background information

    Delta RPMs (DRPMs) are very similar to binary (regular) RPMs. The main difference is that DRPMs contain only the changes between two versions of an RPM package. This allows you to do full updates in a lot less time - Instead of downloading a full 10MB for an update where only 50kb of content changed, for example, you can now download only that 50kb of change and apply it to your system.

    Not only will you save on bandwidth since you're only downloading in the changes in a package, but you'll also cut down on the time it takes to download and apply the packages.

    Presto is a project which brings deltarpm and yum together; In other words, letting you use yum to apply DRPMs.

    Installing yum-presto

    The first step toward setting up Presto is installing the yum plugin:

    yum -y install yum-presto

    Configure the Updates repository

    Next, we need to configure your updates repository to download deltarpm packages instead of the full ones. In the /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo file you'll find two lines that looks like this in the [updates] section:

    #baseurl=http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/updates/$releasever/$basearch/
    mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=updates-released-fX&arch=$basearch

    Add a pound character to the start of the mirrorlist line so that it looks like this:

    #baseurl=http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/updates/$releasever/$basearch/
    #mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=updates-released-fX&arch=$basearch

    Finally, add a new line just under the "#mirrorlist=" line we just edited:

    mirrorlist=http://presto-mirrors.anmar.eu.org/mirrorlist?repo=updates-released-f$releasever&arch=$basearch

    The pound sign makes Yum ignore the line that it's on, so essentially we're telling yum to ignore the base repository and any mirrors. The line which was added tells yum to use the presto-enabled mirrors instead.

     
    That's it! Now run you can use yum or yumex as normal and benefit from the advantages of deltarpms.
     
    Need more help or want to ask a question? Discuss this topic here.