Dustin’s Blog

Another nice new feature of Leopard is Spaces. For anyone who has used Linux at all you’ll recognize that Spaces is nothing more than virtual desktops. The problem with Spaces is that it isn’t enough like virtual desktops to really make me feel at home with it. A preferences panel add on called Warp fixes this.

http://www.ksuther.com/warp/

Using Warp I can now drag a window from once space to the next or go to the next space by pushing my mouse against an edge.

I’ve been using my Mac Mini as what I’d call my “primary computer” almost from the moment I received it. While I have a laptop that I can use around the house or travel with, I use the Mac because it is so quiet, it’s hooked up to a 22″ screen and because I enjoy the OS X experience. Over the months I’ve managed to find a few software titles that help me get things done.

• iTerm - Nice terminal app that more closely resembles my favorite Windows SSH client, putty. Has tabs, etc
• Firefox - Who doesn’t know what Firefox is?
• Thunderbird - Mail just can’t compete with the speed of Thunderbird for IMAP accounts
• Gamepedia - I play games and I like to track them. There are other software options available, even some more generic but I just like this one
• Adium - Adium is a multi-protocol chat client using the same libraries as Pidgin
• Vienna - Great RSS reader
• Things - Simple way to track…things
• Mythfrontend - MythTV is my DVR of choice and I need a way to access it on the Mac, this it!
• Integrity - This is a simple link checker for OS X, similar to Xenu’s Link Sleuth. Xenu’s Link Sleuth is superior however.
• MacTheRipper - Best DVD ripping tool I’ve found for the Mac
• NeoOffice - This is currently the only way to run OpenOffice “natively” on the Mac. It’s slow but gets the job done
• Remote Desktop Connection - Sometimes you need to access a Windows machine. I use this primarily to connect to my XP VMWare guest running on my Linux server for web site testing
• Macfuse/SSHFS - Nearly identical to fuse and sshfs for Linux
• Transmission and Azureus - One bittorrent client just isn’t enough
• VLC - Great multi-platform video player. Perian is able to install many of the same codecs VLC will play but I have soft spot for VLC

One thing that a number of people overlook is that RAID is NOT a backup solution. That’s right, say it with me, “RAID is not a backup solution.” RAID is at most a data availability solution and nothing more. With that in mind it is always good to have a backup. This post will concentrate on creating a backup script and routine for my Linux server as well as my Mac. Since the Mac is UNIX based I can back it up in much the same way as I do my Linux server.

Please keep in mind that this method assumes a lot of things and should not be considered for a business environment where security is more important. My method involves creating a public/private ssh key without a passphrase and worse, the root password for my MySQL server is also coded into this script. Since this is all DIY, you can expand whatever you do to be a bit more secure.

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Continuing with today’s theme of software I like I wanted to post a bit about OpenVPN. OpenVPN is a cross platform (Windows, Linux, *BSD, Solaris and OSX) VPN available at http://openvpn.net/. Using OpenVPN you are able to connect a remote client or remote network to another network across the Internet with minimal firewall fuss. I use OpenVPN for various client to network and network to network style VPNs. I also use OpenVPN on my Linux server at home so my laptop can send and receive email from anywhere.

If you’re looking for a way to image the drive in your computer look no further than Snapshot. Snapshot is available at http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/ and allows you to image your hard drive while the computer is running. Now I’ve used a number of backup solutions in my day and Snapshot ranks right up there as the best. Using Snapshot I have backed up and restored my laptop a number of times. Go ahead and click the link to read more about it. It costs about $49 USD.