samedi 10 novembre 2018

Piwigo on server

So I'm reinstalling Piwigo and stuff on my little server this time.

Software

sudo tasksel
Select LAMP server, OK -> install 28 packages or so.  Test: http://kid2.lan/ (OK: apache default page).

sudo apt install php7.2-mbstring php7.2-gd php7.2-mysql
Change the following in  /etc/php/7.2/apache2/php.ini :
upload_max_filesize = 20M
post_max_size = 20M
max_file_uploads = 99

Database

Create piwigo.sql script with the necessary CREATE DATABASE and so on.
mysql -u root -p < /home/luc/Documents/Config/piwogo.sql

Piwigo

cd /tmp && wget -O piwigo.zip \
http://piwigo.org/download/dlcounter.php?code=latest
unzip piwigo.zip
sudo mv piwigo /var/www/html/
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/piwigo/
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/piwigo/

Apache configuration

sudo vi /etc/apache2/sites-available/piwigo.conf

Create this file as in previous blog entry, but on port 80 and without the SSL stuff for the moment.  We want to init Piwigo before, but you could do it after the SSL/HTTPS configuration too I guess.

Piwigo initialization

Goto http://kid2.lan/piwigo/ and the initialization script starts.  Test under HTTP for the time being.

SSL (HTTPS) configuration

Install certbot:
sudo apt install certbot
The rest of the instructions for using certbot it at :
https://desec.io/#!/en/docs/certbot

Apparently certbot needs curl to be installed, but I had to first upgrade urbackup-server to 2.2.11 to remove a dependency on libcurl3 from urbackup-server-2.2.7 (otherwise installing curl would have removed urbackup-server).
When the certificate was received, I just changed piwigo.conf to activate the SSL stuff, and also had to enable the Apache ssl module:

sudo vi /etc/apache2/sites-available/piwigo.conf
sudo a2enmod ssl







Piwigo is pretty good hey

yes it it.  Also, I played a bit with port 443 forwarding and https configuration in Apache, and it finally kind of works.

Dynamic DNS

I have used  https://desec.io/ after trying also no-ip before.  Works fine.  In the Proximus BBOX I did setup the dyndns client parameters:

Provider: Custom
User Name: myhostIchoseTheNameOf.dedyn.io (as on desec.io: my domain)
Password: (my password at desec.io)
Hostname: myhostIchoseTheNameOf.dedyn.io
Custom Service:
HTTPS: On
Server: update.dedyn.io
Port: 443
Request:  ?hostname=%5BmyhostIchoseTheNameOf.dedyn.io%5D&myip=%5BIP%5D
Update Interval: 3600

DHCP

The HTTPS server needs a fixed IP address so we can do port forwarding in the next step.  Just assign one in the DSL router dialogs

Port forwarding

Forward only port 443 to the fixed IP address you assigned to the HTTPS server

SSL

Obtaining the first certificate was OK after a lot of reading, and some trial and error.  I still have to document how this can be done through let's encrypt

Apache:

 <VirtualHost *:443>
        ServerAdmin admin@myserver.lan
        DocumentRoot /var/www/html/piwigo
        ServerName myhostIchoseTheNameOf.dedyn.io

        SSLEngine on
        SSLProtocol all -SSLv2
        SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/myhostIchoseTheNameOf.dedyn.io/cert.pem
        SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/myhostIchoseTheNameOf.dedyn.io/privkey.pem
        SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/myhostIchoseTheNameOf.dedyn.io/fullchain.pem
     <Directory /var/www/html/piwigo/>
        Options +FollowSymlinks
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted
     </Directory>

     ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
     CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

</VirtualHost>

mardi 30 octobre 2018

Piwigo photo gallery test

So I followed instructions, mainly from this site.
PHP 7.2 is available in Ubuntu now so I used the repositories instead of a PPA to install it.  In addition I had to install the following optional php modules:
  • sudo apt install php7.2-gd
  • sudo apt install php7.2-mysql
  • sudo apt install php7.2-mbstring
  • ???
The proceeded to finish the install using the web interface.  Worked OK, uploaded a bunch of photos.  So far so good, starting to test.  Idelly this should provide:
  • Easy bulk upload from Darktable
  • Use metadata when available in the JPEG file, and allow searching on them:
    • title
    • description
    • tags (keywords)
    • date taken
    • geotagging
    • ...
  • Authenticate users in the web interface
  • Allows users to view but also download to their local device (phone, pc)
  • ?
So after some testing:
  • Easy bulk upload from Darktable: not directly.  I thought it was possible but the feature request about this is not progressing much in 5 years.  Exporting to JPEG then uploading through the web interface is possible of course.
  • Authenticate users in the web interface : Yes, looks fine
  • Allows users to view but also download to their local device (phone, pc) : Yes, look fine
  • Use metadata when available in the JPEG file, and allow searching on them: not out of the box.  There used to be a plugin (Advanced Metadata) to do that, but it's not been maintained and doesn't run on current Piwigo releases apparenty.  So this is a show stopper for me.
Conclusion: dropped user and database from mysql, left the rest of the LAMP stack installed, might get used by something else later on... then noticed that Shotwell has a working Publish interface to Piwigo so started all over again to test that.

Desktop is too slow, upgraded

So I bought another 10 year old tower to replace it.  Bought an HP xw4600 workstation, nice hardware for its time.  Q6600 quad core, 4gb ecc ram with 2 free dimm slots, relatively quiet, nvidia quadro 285 with dual monitor support, free drive bays, multi card reader, lots of PCI slots, USB, firewire and ps2 ports, raid sata controller with 2x250gb caviars, DVD burner.
Installed Lubuntu on one of the drives, added urbackup client, then photo apps.  Set up autofs as NFS client. Tested Darktable using NFS and local copies, it looks much faster than the old one.  Exports still taking time over NFS at least.
So I removed the 2tb home drive from kid3 and installed it in the HP. Worked likes treat, but I still need to do some user and group admin.  In the meantime I finished 45 photos in Darktable by working locally and found no performance issues even though YouTube was consuming CPU and ram at the same time.
Memory could be upgraded, need to find some pc6400e dimms as the non-ecc support seems to be limited in this motherboard.
I also need to find a couple sata cables to get the DVD drive working (I stole the DVD cables for the 2tb HDD).
My monitors work fine with the VGA adapter that came with it but I now need a HDMI to dvi-D cable to extend my laptop display.  Think I already have that somewhere.
Next steps are the completion of a first full backup, RAM expansion to at least 8gb and later will be to clean up the laptop home dir and fix the filesystem and dpkg issue, maybe a reinstall is needed.
I'll be left with two functional tower PCs with little or no RAM or disks.  Maybe I'll try to refurbish and donate them.

mercredi 17 octobre 2018

Desktop is too slow, current state and some benchmarks (1/x)

So my desktop computer is becoming too slow for even the lightest photo editing tasks.  Don't even try video.  Here's the current setup:
$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor    : 0
vendor_id    : GenuineIntel
cpu family    : 6
model        : 15
model name    : Intel(R) Pentium(R) Dual  CPU  E2200  @ 2.20GHz
stepping    : 13
microcode    : 0xa4
cpu MHz        : 1290.420
cache size    : 1024 KB
physical id    : 0
siblings    : 2
core id        : 0
cpu cores    : 2
apicid        : 0
initial apicid    : 0
fpu        : yes
fpu_exception    : yes
cpuid level    : 10
wp        : yes
flags        : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl cpuid aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm lahf_lm pti dtherm
bugs        : cpu_meltdown spectre_v1 spectre_v2 spec_store_bypass l1tf
bogomips    : 4399.87
Memory is ok (nobody was logged in):
$ cat /proc/meminfo | head -20
MemTotal:        4039364 kB
MemFree:         2716668 kB
MemAvailable:    3529372 kB
Buffers:           70428 kB
Cached:           899376 kB
SwapCached:            0 kB
Active:           612904 kB
Inactive:         482644 kB
Active(anon):     126648 kB
Inactive(anon):    12484 kB
Active(file):     486256 kB
Inactive(file):   470160 kB
Unevictable:           0 kB
Mlocked:               0 kB
SwapTotal:       4085756 kB
SwapFree:        4085756 kB
Dirty:              5460 kB
I'm testing the system disk performance with bonnie++ (this is new to me):
$ time bonnie++ -d /tmp -s 0 -n 100 -f
Create files in sequential order...done.
Stat files in sequential order...done.
Delete files in sequential order...done.
Create files in random order...done.
Stat files in random order...done.
Delete files in random order...done.
Version  1.97       ------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create--------
kid3                -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete--
              files  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP
                100 34604  72 +++++ +++ 45834  69 36578  74 +++++ +++ 40212  63
Latency             23276us    1109us    1045us     366us      55us     136ms
1.97,1.97,kid3,1,1539800153,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,100,,,,,34604,72,+++++,+++,45834,69,36578,74,+++++,+++,40212,63,,,,,,,23276us,1109us,1045us,366us,55us,136ms

real    0m11,145s
user    0m0,483s
sys    0m7,505s
For reference, the same command on the local system disk on my (about 2x faster) laptop:
$ time bonnie++ -d /tmp -s 0 -n 100 -f
Create files in sequential order...done.
Stat files in sequential order...done.
Delete files in sequential order...done.
Create files in random order...done.
Stat files in random order...done.
Delete files in random order...done.
Version  1.97       ------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create--------
run12l              -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete--
              files  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP
                100 60110  55 +++++ +++ 85174  60 68694  63 +++++ +++ 80560  59
Latency               283us     525us    4572us    1961us      46us    5125us
1.97,1.97,run12l,1,1539794180,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,100,,,,,60110,55,+++++,+++,85174,60,68694,63,+++++,+++,80560,59,,,,,,,283us,525us,4572us,1961us,46us,5125us

real    0m6,009s
user    0m0,200s
sys    0m3,520s
Same command again but access to the desktop system disk through NFS from my laptop.  I used much smaller number of files because it's a lot slower that way:
$ time bonnie++ -d /net/kid3.lan/home/luc/tmp -s 0 -n 5 -f
Create files in sequential order...done.
Stat files in sequential order...done.
Delete files in sequential order...done.
Create files in random order...done.
Stat files in random order...done.
Delete files in random order...done.
Version  1.97       ------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create--------
run12l              -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete--
              files  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP
                  5   569  10 +++++ +++  1595  13   571  10  3440  19  1562  13
Latency             20565us   36590us    1070us   10365us    1543us    3710us
1.97,1.97,run12l,1,1539795060,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,5,,,,,569,10,+++++,+++,1595,13,571,10,3440,19,1562,13,,,,,,,20565us,36590us,1070us,10365us,1543us,3710us

real    0m26,198s
user    0m0,098s
sys    0m2,987s
Boththe laptop and the desktop are directly linked through an old ethernet hub/router/switch D-LINK DSL-604T that does not support higher than 100Mbps):
run12l $ ethtool eno1|grep Speed
    Speed: 100Mb/s
kid3:~$ ethtool enp0s15|grep Speed
    Speed: 100Mb/s
Partitions/Disks on the desktop, sdb is the system disk and sda1 is a larger disk holding all the non-system data:
$ blkid
/dev/sda1: LABEL="HOME" UUID="501fb987-b347-4b94-a2ac-97d971e28664" UUID_SUB="42cc63c7-590c-4aaf-b850-9e797ed2969e" TYPE="btrfs" PARTUUID="859ce7cb-01"
/dev/sdb1: LABEL="PQSERVICE" UUID="04D2821BE49BED2A" TYPE="ntfs" PARTUUID="2bd2c32a-01"
/dev/sdb2: LABEL="ACER" UUID="E0D8E5D0D8E5A4CE" TYPE="ntfs" PARTUUID="2bd2c32a-02"
/dev/sdb3: LABEL="VIDEOS" UUID="A46020DA6020B4C8" TYPE="ntfs" PARTUUID="2bd2c32a-03"
/dev/sdb5: UUID="b140a7c9-071d-48e2-861e-44242b16fce0" TYPE="swap" PARTUUID="2bd2c32a-05"
/dev/sdb6: UUID="41402262-1350-461f-bed3-b0e8e73610b7" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="2bd2c32a-06"
$ mount|grep sd
/dev/sdb6 on / type ext4 (rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro,data=ordered)
/dev/sdb2 on /windows type fuseblk (ro,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,allow_other,blksize=4096)
/dev/sdb3 on /videos type fuseblk (rw,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,allow_other,blksize=4096)
/dev/sda1 on /home type btrfs (rw,relatime,space_cache,subvolid=5,subvol=/)

mardi 24 avril 2018

kid2/kid3 : new disk situation

So now kid3 only has two remaining disks: 500GB for system(s) and 2TB for btrfs /home

The WD 2TB drive has been moved to kid2 and after twiddling with the BIOS boot order kid2 went online again and happily started a full backup of run12l.

So I have a little bit of time to fiddle with the btrfs again.  Here's the situation (in addition, there's still an unconnected HDD in kid2, don't know what it is).

Systems are on /dev/sdb : 149,1 GiB, 160041885696 octets, 312581808 secteurs
btrfs small part on /dev/sda1 : 596,2 GiB, 640135028736 octets, 1250263728 secteurs
btrfs large part on /dev/sdd : 1,8 TiB, 2000398934016 octets, 3907029168 secteurs
So /dev/sdc is the WD migrated from kid3:

Disque /dev/sdc : 1,8 TiB, 2000398934016 octets, 3907029168 secteurs
Unités : sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 octets
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x000ef301

Périphérique Amorçage     Start        Fin   Secteurs   Size Id Type
/dev/sdc1                  2048  976575284  976573237 465,7G 83 Linux
/dev/sdc2             976576512 3907029167 2930452656   1,4T 8e LVM Linux


So after:
sudo btrfs device add -f /dev/sdc1 /var/backup/urBackup/

I get:
Label: none  uuid: 4881245e-bed5-4526-b9ff-3b5ba39b283d
        Total devices 3 FS bytes used 1.10TiB
        devid    3 size 596.17GiB used 567.03GiB path /dev/sda1
        devid    4 size 1.82TiB used 567.03GiB path /dev/sdd
        devid    5 size 465.67GiB used 0.00B path /dev/sdc1


Then to free the small 640GB drive I can use:
sudo btrfs device remove /dev/sda1 /var/backup/urBackup/

lundi 23 avril 2018

kid3/kid2 hard disks: current state

/dev/sdc6         101253   7981     88106   9% /
/dev/sdc3         111493    126    111368   1% /videos
/dev/sdc2         218500  48874    169627  23% /windows
/dev/sda1        1907729 873821   1032357  46% /home


/dev/sdc is the original Windows/Linux boot/Swap disk and has the root in sdc6:

Device     Boot     Start       End   Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sdc1              63  81835109  81835047    39G 27 Hidden NTFS WinRE
/dev/sdc2  *     81836032 529324031 447488000 213,4G  6 FAT16
/dev/sdc3       529324032 757660408 228336377 108,9G  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdc4       757661694 976771071 219109378 104,5G  5 Extended
/dev/sdc5       968599552 976771071   8171520   3,9G 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdc6       757661696 968599551 210937856 100,6G 83 Linux


/dev/sda is a single btrfs drive, on the 2TB that came from base:
Device     Boot Start        End    Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sda1        2048 3907029167 3907027120  1,8T 83 Linux



/dev/sdb is currently unused and contains:
Device     Boot     Start        End    Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1            2048  976575284  976573237 465,7G 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2       976576512 3907029167 2930452656   1,4T 8e Linux LVM


/dev/sdb1 and /dev/sdc3 are empty; sdb2 is the old /home LVM that didn't mount very well lately.  So /dev/sdb is essentially free to be reused to extend the btrfs, or move to kid2 (the new backup server with urBackup).

But extending kid3's home directory is not urgent (currently not yet 50% used and could probably be cleaned too).  On kid2, the btrfs for urBackup is not under stress either, with 1.10 TB used on 3 drives, including one 2TB drive that could be enough to hold everything anyway.

So I decide to not decide doing anything right now.  Maybe I could free the 2 extra drives in kid2 as they're small capacity and could be reused to revive an old laptop or so:
 
sudo btrfs device remove /dev/sdc1 /var/backup/urBackup/

So the above command did take a while, but ended up freeing /dev/sdc1 which is the 500GB hard drive that I bought for 5€.  The 640GB that remains can't be freed for the moment as it is part of the RAID1 profile.  So now I'm planning to add the 2TB drive to this:

Label: none  uuid: 4881245e-bed5-4526-b9ff-3b5ba39b283d
    Total devices 2 FS bytes used 1.10TiB
    devid    3 size 596.17GiB used 567.03GiB path /dev/sda1
    devid    4 size 1.82TiB used 567.03GiB path /dev/sdd



and when done I could easily remove the sda1 small drive.

lundi 9 avril 2018

LVM hiccups

LVM doesn't start OK anymore

This happened yesterday on kid3 (oops - allmost all my data lives there)

Symptom: boot interrupted (can't mount /home in mount -a during boot).  Troubleshooting: turns out that /dev/mapper no longer contains the required links.  Also, it seems to contain snapshots probably created by the urBackup agent but that's another story.

Cure: wait for the maintenance login promt, re-create the missing links with vgscan --mknodes, mount /home again.

Further plan: remove the 2TB seagate drive from base (Packard Bell) and install it in kid3 (ACER).  I will need an extender cable for the SATA power to be able to reach the DVD drive, due to rerouting its power cable to the drive coming from base.  Create a btrfs on that disk instead of the LVM+ext4 configuration that the other 2TB drive currently has.  Mount that under /home2 and:

sudo rsync -vaxHAX /home /home2

jeudi 15 février 2018

Disks swaps in kid2, btrfs continued...

Disk (end of) life

Kid2 is happily running the urBackup system for 3 windows laptops but doesn't really have the disk space required to continue the lifesize test (i.e. backuping my most disk-intensive Linux systems). So I ordered a 2TB drive from Amazon. Got i/o errors then sent it back. Still waiting confirmation for the refund, not a terribly good experience so far. I recycled two 2.5" hard disks, one from an older laptop and another from a thrift store, so I could continue running urBackup in the meantime. Then I got i/o errors from the PATA drives (both of them, the 6.4GB from an older desktop and also the 200GB from the thrift store). Long story short, I did order another 2TB drive from eBay this time, it arrived yesterday so I mounted and tested it. I removed the PATA drives and currently the 300GB is still in the box but not connected due to lack of SATA power cables. Benchmarked the new drive, seems OK:


Add to btrfs

Like so:
sudo btrfs device add -f /dev/sdd /var/backup/urBackup
Then:
 sudo btrfs filesystem show
Label: none  uuid: 4881245e-bed5-4526-b9ff-3b5ba39b283d
    Total devices 3 FS bytes used 145.29GiB
    devid    1 size 465.76GiB used 74.03GiB path /dev/sdc1
    devid    3 size 596.17GiB used 74.03GiB path /dev/sda1
    devid    4 size 1.82TiB used 0.00B path /dev/sdd
Make some use of the new available space:
sudo btrfs balance start /var/backup/urBackup
 WARNING:

    Full balance without filters requested. This operation is very
    intense and takes potentially very long. It is recommended to
    use the balance filters to narrow down the scope of balance.
    Use 'btrfs balance start --full-balance' option to skip this
    warning. The operation will start in 10 seconds.
    Use Ctrl-C to stop it.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Starting balance without any filters.
....after...a...long...while...
Done, had to relocate 75 out of 75 chunks

Label: none  uuid: 4881245e-bed5-4526-b9ff-3b5ba39b283d
    Total devices 3 FS bytes used 148.21GiB
    devid    1 size 465.76GiB used 50.00GiB path /dev/sdc1
    devid    3 size 596.17GiB used 51.03GiB path /dev/sda1
    devid    4 size 1.82TiB used 51.03GiB path /dev/sdd

Add a new Linux client

Host run12l is a good candidate now that we have more space available.  It has a 300GB HDSSD quite filled up with photos and videos.  It used to have a client already installed, so it was just a matter of reactivating it and defining it in the "Unix" group so that the /home directory becomes the default backup directory instead of the C:\Users windows default.  First full backup started, looks good.

mercredi 24 janvier 2018

NFS and Automount on a new client

  • sudo apt install autofs
  • sudo vi /etc/auto.master, then uncomment the /net line:
# NOTE: mounts done from a hosts map will be mounted with the
#    "nosuid" and "nodev" options unless the "suid" and "dev"
#    options are explicitly given.
#
/net    -hosts
  • sudo mkdir /net
  •  sudo systemctl restart autofs
  • ls /net/server/home/user

samedi 20 janvier 2018

Starting use of btrfs

So I had this "new" 200GB PATA disk to play with.  I started with some reading from howtoforge and created my first btrfs partition on it.  Initially I formatted the entire disk (/dev/sda) like this:
mkfs.btrfs /dev/sda
Then I changed my mind and recreated a partition table and a primary partition just for clarity.  It doesn't seem to help much but it also doesn't seem to be a problem and I reformatted using:
mkfs.btrfs /dev/sda1
So far so good.   186GB available.  I updated /etc/fstab to use the new btrfs partition for urBackup data and activating lzo compression on it:
UUID=5b775601-11bb-42d9-8b43-e106fb288c8e /var/backup/urBackup    btrfs compress=lzo 0 2
I moved the contents of my 300GB ext4 partition there after stopping the urBackup service:
sudo service urbackupsrv stop
Then restarted urBackup and checked it was running fine.  However I had to first change the permissions because urBackup runs as a normal user:
sudo chown urbackup:urbackup /var/backup/urBackup/
At this point the urBackup service seems to be happy from its new home:
sudo service urbackupsrv status
urbackupsrv.service - LSB: Server for doing backups
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/urbackupsrv; generated; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Sat 2018-01-20 12:15:56 CET; 14min ago
     Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
  Process: 1131 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/urbackupsrv start (code=exited, status=0/S
    Tasks: 25 (limit: 4915)
   CGroup: /system.slice/urbackupsrv.service
           └─1301 /usr/bin/urbackupsrv run --config /etc/default/urbackupsrv --d

jan 20 12:15:50 kid2.lan systemd[1]: Starting LSB: Server for doing backups...
jan 20 12:15:56 kid2.lan systemd[1]: Started LSB: Server for doing backups.
jan 20 12:16:51 kid2.lan urbackupsrv[1301]: Login successful for admin from 192.
jan 20 12:19:52 kid2.lan urbackupsrv[1301]: Login successful for admin from 127.
From there I recycled my 300GB SATA hard disk and added it to the btrfs pool, thus making it a multivolume filesystem:
sudo btrfs device add -f /dev/sdb1 /var/backup/urBackup
 Pretty happy at this  point.  Even more available space:
sudo btrfs filesystem show
Label: none  uuid: 5b775601-11bb-42d9-8b43-e106fb288c8e
    Total devices 2 FS bytes used 43.80GiB
    devid    1 size 186.31GiB used 2.01GiB path /dev/sda1
    devid    2 size 298.09GiB used 43.00GiB path /dev/sdb1

Or else:
df -h /dev/sda1
Sys. de fichiers Taille Utilisé Dispo Uti% Monté sur
/dev/sda1          485G     44G  440G  10% /var/backup/urBackup
The space above is shown after I had let urBackup run and soon after I had my backups done from the two Windows clients that are defined.  Can't wait now to add a third, bigger hard disk to this filesystem...





vendredi 19 janvier 2018

New disks

Received an Amaz0n order for a 2TB Hitachi disk. Never worked (I/O errors). Sent it back without investigating too long, waiting for the refund.

Yesterday I found a used 200GB (also Hitachi) PATA drive in a thrift store, for 5€ -40% sales = 3€. Not large enough for backups but might be a good idea as playground while experimenting with btrfs, LVM and such. So got it and testing it currently. So far so good. Had to re-create the GPT however, seems like there wasn't any partition table initially but the reformatting went fine. Here's the results of f3write & f3read:
Data OK: 182.31 GB (382329456 sectors)
Data LOST: 0.00 Byte (0 sectors)
        Corrupted: 0.00 Byte (0 sectors)
 Slightly changed: 0.00 Byte (0 sectors)
      Overwritten: 0.00 Byte (0 sectors)
Average reading speed: 58.11 MB/s
Contemplating buying another 2TB SATA from same source or a used one from local classifieds. In both cases around 60€ or so.

Tested a "2TB USB stick" from China. Obviously it was a fake but I got most of my money back. Just a confirmation of what I thought already, these things don't exist, or at least not at the prices they're selling for.

On a side note I also received my PCI Express USB3.0 interface card and installed it. It needs a MOLEX power cable and I have only one in that box (kid2) so now I need 3 of those (2 PATA drives + the USB3 card). So I ordered a 3-way splitter and in the meantime I can test these devices one-by-one. The USB3 card seems to work (at least with a mouse) but I'd need to check with a real USB 3.0 HDD to be sure.

jeudi 4 janvier 2018

urBackup episode 4

So again after a few more weeks of testing, urBackup has the lead for backing up Windows boxes, even those that don't stay online for very long periods (so far).  Linux boxes also work fine too.

During the same period, BackupPC took many backups of Linux hosts, but only managed 50% of the (currently in-house) Windows 10 hosts.  Even when I intentionally leave one online all night long, the backup still seems to hang.

So as a conclusion, I'm buying another 2TB drive soon and will install it on kid2 to roll out more urBackup clients.  If that can handle the load then I'll also transfer the crontab/flickr email script that still runs on base.  Then migrate the existing 2TB from base to kid2 and decommission base.

mercredi 3 janvier 2018

Agenda/Time reporting/Invoicing/Bookkeeping project

New project for my putative business and for my wife's current operations as a speech therapist.

Requirements

  1. Easy data entry
  2. Possibly, google calendar as the main data input for mobile and office usage
  3. If Google Calendar used, needs good integration/export capability
  4. Needs to identify separate customers/projects for later invoicing/reporting
  5. Must support French language
  6. Regardless of data entry/storage : must provide export to local readable files for archive/backup purposes

Nice to Have

  1. Nice if invoices can be produced from the time reports/agenda
  2. Invoicing must support non-VAT (speech therapist) or VAT (my business) invoicing
  3. For VAT, Belgian regulations and fees must be supported
  4. For invoices, sending via email/Zoomit/Paypal or other modern services should be available
  5. For accounts receivables, invoice tracking and payment reconciliation is a plus.  Integration with local (Belgian) bank systems is a definite plus
  6. For further bookkeeping, full accounts payable module is another bonus

 INCWO

Looks like it's a french company.  Nice feature list, recurrent payment depending on activated modules, starts at 49€ / year.  So far seems to match R1-2, R4-5, N2, possibly N4-6.  Definitely not N5 for Belgian banks but I have opened a ticket to ask this very question.  The jury's out.

GTimeReport

Free! but limited to R1-4, R6.  R5 limited support (help pages via Google Translate).  So it kind of ticks all required boxes and is free.