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December 2008

Steve FranciaDec 29,2008

Backup Your Files

Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer

Image via Wikipedia

One of the worst experiences you can have as a computer operator is to realize you (or something else) just did something and wiped out your files. The purpose of this article is to show you how to automatically backup your files often and automatically. I use this setup to backup my documents every hour (I save more often then that). This gives me hourly versions of all my files I am working on. It even protects me from accidentally saving over an important document (at least to the last hour).

 Install Rsync-incr

You could do everything you need with Rsync... but our goal here is easy and automatic. Rsync-incr is a nice shell script that uses Rsync to do incremental backups, surrounding it with an easy interface. Win Win.. The stability of Rsync, with an easy to use interface.

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Steve FranciaDec 19,2008

Secure, Automated, Key based SSH

Keychain

Image via Wikipedia

SSH is great and secure… Unless you need to automate it. Then it sucks because your only options are to create a passwordless key, or login add your key to ssh-agent, stay logged in forever. Here’s a quick guide to having the best of both worlds. A Secure SSH Connection that can be used in automated scripts. ( with the single catch, that upon reboot you need to re-enter your key’s password )

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Steve FranciaDec 12,2008

Backing up MySQL

MySQL

Image via Wikipedia

I don't know very many people that haven't been devastated by the loss of data... Yet I am baffled that millions of professional IT workers still ignore backing up their data. Since computers are great at doing repetitive things like backups.. why not spend 20 minutes setting up your machine to backup your files for you. This guide will be specific to mysql to create a local copy of the backup. Then read my other guide about copying files securely to a remote backup server for the 2nd part. 

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Steve FranciaDec 11,2008

One Hundred Pushups

One Hundred Pushups

A while back a bunch of people were twittering about the 100 pushup challenge. Thanksgiving was the catalyst for me. I began my quest for better health about a week ago. 

The premise of the challenge is quite simple. It is a six week program, that if followed, you can do 100 consecutive good form push ups at the end of the program. I am in decent enough shape now, despite not visiting the gym as often as I should. During the initial test I erked out 31 pushups. I knew there was another teir at 30, so that was my goal. I have been tracking my progress here http://spf13.com/pushups

I also convinced the entire Portero Tech team to join me in my quest, or at least the start of it. Some of them are also tracking their progress http://justinhileman.info/pushups.

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