Posts tagged Software

10 reasons why you should use Mozy for your computer backups

by AltJ

Mozy Backups
There are a lot of backup services out there on the internet so I thought I’d do a quick writeup of my favorite. Here are 10 reasons why you should use Mozy Unlimited Backup for your computer backups.

  1. Ease of use – Their software is easy to setup. After the inital setup, there is zero effort required by you for your backups to function. If you do need to restore a single file, it’s easy: just browse to it in your backup list and restore it. If you need to restore all of your files, you can grab a zip file of all your files from their website.
  2. Cost – If you have less than 2GB of files to backup, the service is free. From 2GB and up, the service is $4.95/month. That’s right, for $4.95/month, you can backup unlimited files (on a single computer.)
  3. Cross platform – Works on both Windows and Mac (and I heard they’ll have a Linux version someday, but I’m not getting my hopes up.)
  4. Security – All communication is done over SSL (just like your banking websites.) In addition to that, your files are encrypted prior to being sent over the internet (and are stored encrypted.) If you’re extra paranoid like me, you can even use your own key to encrypt the files. But beware if you use your own key it will be required to restore files – even Mozy won’t be able to help you restore files without your key.
  5. Past file versions – Let’s say you butchered some changes to a file and wanted to get back the version you had 3 days ago. With Mozy you can do that!
  6. Doesn’t slow down your computer – The resources used by Mozy are small and you can custom configure them even further so that it will run when your computer is idle. I prefer to schedule backups to run in the middle of the night so they can use all of my internet bandwidth to get the backups done quickly (I leave my computers on all the time.)
  7. Block-level incremental backups – Don’t doze off at the techno-jargon. This is particularly useful if you are backing up your huge Outlook .pst file (or any larges file that you may have.) Any time you receive an email, that huge file is modified. Other online backup services will require that the entire file be uploaded during a backup. With Mozy only the changes to the file are uploaded, thus decreasing backup time and bandwidth usage.
  8. Durable company – Mozy is owned by a very large data storage company (EMC is worth approx.$20B.) They’re not going away any time soon.
  9. Your hard drive is going to die – When it comes to hard drives, failure isn’t a matter of if, but when. That external hard drive you’re using for backups right now is going to fail. If your house burns down, it will die a horrible death at the same time as the hard drive in your computer. You need your data backed up offsite.
  10. My mother uses it – She’s been using it for over a year now, and if Mozy is good enough for her, isn’t it good enough for you?

New version of AVG anti-virus available

by AltJ

For those of you that run AVG Free (free for personal use) there is a major update available. For those of you that don’t run any antivirus software on your computer – SHAME ON YOU!
This new version includes anti-spyware, so if you have AVG’s anti-spyware (Ewido) installed, you’ll have to uninstall it first (go to Control Panel, then Add/Remove Programs.)
Here are a few bonuses of AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition:

  • available free of charge to home users for the life of the product
  • virus database updates are available for the lifetime of the product
  • doesn’t slow your system down (like other anti-virus systems I’ve seen)
  • integrated spyware protection
  • LinkScanner feature that gives users safety rankings for their Google, Yahoo, and MSN searches.

So, go and download it!
The install only takes a few minutes so don’t put it off, do it now!

Over 5,000,000 phpBB sites hacked

by AltJ in

I see no problem with running phpBB, but there are so many people that don’t keep their software up to date. This is one reason why I hate to have 50 different types of software running on my servers. It’s just more to keep track of and hard to stay up to date on everything.
Here’s a link to the ComputerWorld article.

Oh that reminds me, I need to update my version of wordpress. BRB.

Ubuntu AMI for Amazon EC2 large & xlarge instances

by AltJ in

TunnelI just released another Ubuntu public AMI for Amazon EC2. This one is nearly identical to the first one I released except it can be used with large and extra large instances.

Here are the current tech specs and costs for the different instance sizes:

Small Instance (Default) – $0.10/hr
1.7 GB of memory, 1 EC2 Compute Unit (1 virtual core with 1 EC2 Compute Unit), 160 GB of instance storage, 32-bit platform
Large Instance – $0.40/hr
7.5 GB of memory, 4 EC2 Compute Units (2 virtual cores with 2 EC2 Compute Units each), 850 GB of instance storage, 64-bit platform
Extra Large Instance – $0.80/hr
15 GB of memory, 8 EC2 Compute Units (4 virtual cores with 2 EC2 Compute Units each), 1690 GB of instance storage, 64-bit platform

iFolder on Kubuntu Gutsy (7.10)

by AltJ

Snowy RocksI’ve been using iFolder for a few years now and am now in the process of switching my desktop from SuSE 10.1 to Kubuntu Gutsy. I was a little saddened that I couldn’t find a native ifolder package for ubuntu, so I had to compile it myself.

I found these instructions and my own are almost identical. I found a few things that I had to do differently.

  1. Install dependencies – These are the dependencies I found were required.
    sudo apt-get install libmono-dev mono-xsp mono-gmcs libflaim-dev libflaim4.1 liblog4net1.2-cil build-essential automake libxml2 libxml2-dev libtool gtk-sharp2 gnome-sharp2 arch-buildpackage gtk-sharp libeel2-2 subversion gettext libstdc++5 libgtk2.0-dev
  2. Make a directory for all the source code (I used ifolder-src in my home dir.)
  3. Download the source code – from within your new directory, run:
    svn co https://forgesvn1.novell.com/svn/ifolder/branches/ifolder_3_4_sled10sp1/ifolder
    svn co https://forgesvn1.novell.com/svn/simias/branches/ifolder_3_4_sled10sp1/simias
  4. Build Simias – I like the idea of putting all this custom compiled stuff into one location (to make cleanup easier if necessary.)
    cd simias
    ./autogen.sh --prefix=/opt/ifolder
    make
    sudo make install
  5. Prep to build iFolder – There are a few things you need to do to get ready
    cd ../ifolder
    edit src/LinuxClient/application/iFolderApplication.cs and change “TrayIcon” to “Egg.TrayIcon” on (or near) lines 68 and 144.
    add a symlink for the arch command
    sudo ln -s /usr/bin/setarch /bin/arch
    cp /usr/share/gettext/config.rpath .
  6. Build and install iFolder
    ./autogen.sh --prefix=/opt/ifolder
    make
    sudo make install

Done!
iFolder can now be run with this command /opt/ifolder/bin/ifolder
If you want to make pretty link to the application on your desktop, you can use the iFolder image found here: /opt/ifolder/share/ifolder3/images/ifolder128.png

.bashrc on OS X

by AltJ

I’ve been using my wife’s macbook more and more, due to my old Dell slowly dying. Since I spend most of my life at a command prompt, I like to customized it a little so I’m more efficient.
Unfortunately, OS X doesn’t automatically load your .bashrc when you start up a command window. Fortunately, it’s easy to enable:
sudo vi /etc/profile
Enter your password and add this line:
[ -r $HOME/.bashrc ] && source $HOME/.bashrc
There you have it. I’ll post some of the aliases and settings I like to have in my .bashrc later.

Upgrade Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper) to 7.04 (Feisty)

by AltJ

I’m in the process of testing some software and wanted to upgrade a server I have with Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper) to 7.04 (Feisty)
The steps are simple, but aren’t documented on Ubuntu’s website (since we’re upgrading two version levels.)
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Mozy acquired by EMC for $76 million

by AltJ

I really like to see good things happen to good companies. I’ve been testing out mozy for personal and business use recently and am glad to see things go well for the company.

Here’s the original news story.

“This computer has not been authorized…”

by AltJ

For a while now, I’ve been getting this error when I try to put music on my mp3 player from Rhapsody: “This computer has not been authorized to play Rhapsody subscription tracks. To authorize, select My Account -> Authroize Computer from the Rhapsody menu.”

I would do what it said and keep getting that message every time.
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OS X Leopard Pre-order

by AltJ

I just realized that OS X Leopard is due to be released next month (October). I’ve studied up on a few of the feature enhancements and am pretty excited to get it. I also found out that you can pre-order it from Amazon right now for $129 plus free shipping.
Amazon has a “Pre-Order Price Guarantee” so even if you order now, you’re guaranteed to get the lowest price on the day of release.

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