Strav's blog

I've been using cpio to do file backups for a while now but only recently had to restore from them. Here's the command I use for duplicating a filesystem to another filesystem:

find . -print -xdev | cpio -pdm /media/sdb3

Here is is with gzip to a file

find . -print -xdev | cpio -ocv | gzip -c > filename.cpio.gz

Here is the extract

cpio -idmv --no-absolute-filenames < filename.cpio

Here is extract with gzip

gunzip -c < filename.cpio.gz | cpio -idmv --no-absolute-filenames

And here is how to ssh to a remote machine and copy a filesystem from the remote to the current directory on the local

ssh root@minimyth2 "find / -depth -print -xdev | cpio -oaV" | cpio -imVd --no-absolute-filenames

Last weekend I finally decided to upgrade the MythTV backend from .20 to .21. In Ubuntu, this means also upgrading the OS in order to get access to the upgraded packages. I honestly expected this to be sort of a no-brainer which was much of the reasoning for going with Ubuntu in the first place. This system is fairly important so minimal downtime and NO data loss are both concerns so I started the process off by backing up the system (not something I normally do). That saved my a** in this case. The first issue was my own fault - coming from a Debian background, I updated the apt sources file to point to the 8.10 LTS repository and did an upgrade which blew up part way through upgrading libc6 and left the system in a state where I couldn't use apt or really much of anything else without segfaults. Restore from backup, research, and find out that Ubuntu does not support upgrading directly from 7.04 to 8.10. It needs to go 7.04->7.10->8.04->8.10 - OK. Unfortunately, it seems that the repositories from 7.10 and earlier have been dropped to make space for the new releases. Crap! So, I download the 7.10 alternate CD and try (4 times) to do upgrades from there to no avail. Finally a day and a half later and no closer to upgrading than when I started, I decide to do a 9.04 install from scratch and configure the system up from nothing. I had a basic MythTV backend system up and running in half a day with this approach. I'm going to detail out much of the process here for future reference.

Boot from livecd (I used knoppix 6.0 but any should do)
Manually partition drive
/boot 250M (be sure to make this bootable)
/swap 4G
/ 40G
/var/video remainder of drive
Reboot from KUbuntu cd and install OS
Remove the Network Manager - it prevented the IP Bonding from working properly
Set up network Bonding
Install all Myth packages
Import myth database from previous system
Copy video FS from previous system
Set up UDEV for the serial devices and network interfaces
Set up MythStatus
Copy over GRUB Screens and update menu.lst
Set up SAMBA (copy old samba config files)
Copy backup scripts
Copy files from
/pub
/home
/usr/local
/root
Copy crontabs
Configure Mythweb

Here are some links to for the 20" HP HDX laptop.

This post has some information regarding HWMonitor and some interesting widgits.

Information on cleaning fan / unit disassembly:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-envy-hdx/169232-official-hp-hdx-dragon-owners-lounge-1129.html#post6542848

iPhone development kit for ubuntu vmware (i.e. windows)

http://tungchingkai.blogspot.com/2008/01/iphone-development-using-windows.html

Here's a site with a large number of registry tips and tweaks for Windows XP.

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm