Backing up data

I've been struggling trying to find a decent solution for backing up my wife's laptop computer. The program I'd been using ended up not backing up some key files. We almost ended up losing all her photos when the hard disk in her laptop started dying recently. It's never a good sign when you hear clicking noises when you try to list a directory. Fortunately the use of SpinRite and a little luck allowed the drive to continue functioning long enough to manually copy the files to an external drive.

After trying a number of different backup programs and not being fully satisfied with any of them, I decided to use something simple. The tar program has been around since the early days of Unix. Tar stands for Tape ARchiver and it was originally used to archive a group of files to a tape device. The beauty of tar is there are versions available for almost any operating system you can think of. That makes it easy to examine the tar files on any system to verify I've backed up all the files which needed backing up. I'd long ago installed cygwin (a version of the most common Unix utilities for Windows) on her laptop so I was good to go. Cygwin can't fix all of Windows' shortcomings but it is able to make Windows much more useful. The Windows command line tools are so woefully underpowered that I no longer consider using them for anything.

Having decided to use tar, there were still a couple other problems which needed to be solved. The resulting tar file for even a partial backup is likely to be quite big. By default tar concatenates all the files with some file information (file name, size, permissions, etc) about each file added. So using gzip to compress the tar files is highly recommended to avoid using too much space on the backup device.

The gzipped tar file for the backup of just the data files on her laptop ends up having a size of just over 11 GB. The external USB hard drive and NAS (network attached storage) drive we have are both formatted as FAT32 to make it easy to use on Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. That presents a problem since FAT32 drives have a maximum file size of 4 GB. So I was forced to use the Unix split program to split the huge tar file into smaller files which can be copied to a FAT32 drive.

After building the tar file, I was able to dump a list of all the files contained in the tar file. I was also to use the find command (the cygwin/GNU version not the lame Dos/Windows version) to build a list of all the files on her hard disk. Then it was a simple matter to use grep to get a list of all the JPG, GIF, DOC, etc files in both the listing of all files and the listing of all files in the tar file. That made it easy to verify that I've managed to back up all the data files.

Whew! It was a lot of work but now I can finally rest easier knowing all her data files are safely backed up.

Bad advice from an IT guy

A relative called recently asking about her friend's laptop computer which was running slowly. Her friend had asked someone from the IT department at work how to make the laptop run quicker. The IT guy's response was to suggest they replace the hard disk with a faster model.

This is wrong on so many levels that it makes my head hurt. First, the IT tech didn't ask any questions to determine what the underlying cause of the slowdown might be. Laptop computers typically come with relatively slow hard drives since lower RPM drives create less heat. Laptops always have trouble dissipating heat because of the small cases. Chances are a faster drive may not be available or at least may not be affordable for the average user. A slow hard drive typically only causes delays in one of two circumstances: loading programs and reading or writing data files. Those two cases comprise a fairly small percentage of the overall usage time and will most likely not produce a noticeable delay.

A better approach to speeding up an older computer is to add more memory. Application software always seems to get larger over time. Data files also have a tendency to grow with use. Users also tend to use more applications simultaneously as they get more sophisticated. All of these conditions probably require more memory than originally came with the laptop. When the laptop doesn't have enough physical memory, Windows will be forced to swap unused applications and portions of the data files out to the swap file on the disk. Hard disk accesses are always much slower than memory accesses.

Sadly, bad advice like this is not at all uncommon. Hang around in the computer section at any big box electronic store any you'll undoubtedly hear something similar. Amazingly enough, $8.50 an hour and a few months of experience doesn't always produce quality technical advice. Imagine that...

PDA replacement

I finally found an excuse to take the plunge and replace my aging Palm Tungsten T3. This is not a transition I make lightly. I've been using Palm PDAs since I bought the first Palm device introduced back in 1996, the Palm Pilot 1000. I got it for special employee pricing since I was working for U.S. Robotics. You may or may not remember that they owned Palm when the first Palm PDA was introduced.

As a longtime and very satisfied Palm user, I would have loved to choose another Palm PDA but Palm's future doesn't look quite so rosy these days. The company has been making some strange moves such as spinning off their software division. They've also apparently lost focus and haven't introduced any new innovative PDAs models in a while. Even the Treo line they've been depending on so heavily has lost ground when compared with other smartphones.

The device I chose as a replacement was the Nokia N810. It includes pretty much all the features the Tungsten has but also features a slide out keyboard, a Wifi adapter, a built-in webcam, a GPS receiver, and can even use a bluetooth cellphone for an Internet connection if a wireless access point isn't available.

Now comes the struggle to figure out how to duplicate all the features I depend on my Palm for on the new device. Fortunately, Access has introduced a Palm emulator called the Garnet VM which should help ease the transition somewhat.

The fleeting nature of data with DRM

This article from the Washington Post highlights a problem which is bound to increase in frequency. It discusses the fact that Walmart has just cancelled their digital movie download service.

When you lock yourself into some form of entertainment which makes use of DRM, you're at the mercy of the company providing the data/service to continue offering it. Now the people who have downloaded movies can only continue watching them on the same PC they downloaded the file to in the first place and they can't re-download should their PC hard disk fail. I'll concede it was more convenient to purchase a movie this way but there wasn't a significant savings involved and what do they have now? Data subject to rapidly increasing entropy thanks to shifting business priorities. They'll definitely lose access at some point... it's just a question of when.

I think the same problem will occur with the e-book readers currently on the market. The Kindle (from Amazon) certainly makes purchasing and carrying lots of books much more convenient and even gives a pretty good ease of use, something important in a device designed to replace physical books. But at what cost? The books themselves aren't offered at a huge savings over paperback editions and they're subject to DRM. So you're tied to the device and should Amazon decide that the device isn't profitable enough and discontinue the service, you're stuck with an expensive device which will continue reading books you've already purchased but won't be good for much else. If they discontinue the service, you can bet that the wireless connection will no longer work.

I've also got other concerns about the device. Can you back up your purchases onto a PC or are you forced to re-download them if you want to re-read them in the future? There are some books I like to read again periodically so a proper replacement for physical books would have to take this into account.

Some companies have little interest in guaranteeing customers have continuing use of their DRM laden files. Microsoft changed DRM formats when they introduced the Zune. It won't play any of their previously purchased songs using the earlier Microsoft DRM technology.

The real answer is to avoid all forms of DRM. Applaud the move of 3 of the 4 major record labels to offer DRM free music on Amazon by supporting their efforts. Whenever possible, support the work of independent artists who haven't been punishing their customers the way the RIAA has. But most importantly, put your foot down and say hell no to DRM.

the sad state of Linux email clients

I use the Thunderbird email client under Fedora at work. I've been searching for a different email client to use to retrieve my personal email since I prefer to keep those messages totally separate. After doing a bit of research, it looks like Evolution and Balsa are the two top email clients (aside from Thunderbird).

I didn't find either to my liking. Evolution (at least the latest version available from Fedora's package manager) was terribly unstable. It also had the worst address book of the 3 email clients. Its rendering of HTML messages was substandard at best. It doesn't display embedded images by default and didn't always display them when I selected the display images option.

Balsa wasn't much better. It was more stable than Evolution but it really didn't support HTML messages well at all. Retrieving messages frequently caused the sorting of message in the Inbox to get confused, forcing me to select the Date heading to force a re-sort. The filtering feature was very disappointing. Adding filters made it activate procmail filtering which caused messages to get stuck in the command line mail utility.

I've settled for using Thunderbird for both work and personal email. Using one of the others just wasn't feasible.

Good Books

I'm reading a couple excellent books at the moment which I thought I'd pass along.

During my commute, I'm listening to Spider Robinson's Callahan's Legacy. Whenever I read a new book by Spider or go back to re-read one of his older books, I'm always amazed at how good I feel while reading it and how I don't want the book to end. There are a handful of authors whose work makes me feel this way: Rudy Rucker, Robert Heinlein, Carl Hiaasen, Richard Feynman, and Richard Dawkins to name but a few.

At night I've started reading Theodore Sturgeon's The Nail and the Oracle: Volume XI: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon. I've been reading this complete collection of Sturgeon's works as they have been published which has been sorely trying my patience as I wait for each new volume. I was originally under the impression that there were to be 10 volumes in the series but a good friend recently mentioned that he had received volume 11 as a gift which caused me to order it as soon as I got home. When I started reading Sturgeon 30+ years ago, I was struck by the fact that his work really transcended the genres of SciFi or Fantasy and that it was sad his audience was probably much smaller than his talent deserved because of these labels. Reading Harlan Ellison's lengthy and touching foreword in this volume, I find I'm not alone in this feeling.

I highly recommend both books. If you haven't read anything by one or both authors, I envy you. You're in for a great read.

Wireless Keyboard Security Compromised

This post at the excellent HackADay web site discusses how the security of wireless keyboards has now been compromised. This makes it even easier for hackers to capture passwords and other information you type on your wireless keyboard. They don't need to risk physical access to install a hardware keyboard capture device or install software to perform the same function. They just need to set up a sniffer device in close enough proximity to capture your key strokes. Under ideal conditions, wireless devices can transmit far beyond their stated maximum range.

I personally use a wireless mouse, a wireless Apple Mighty Mouse which I love, but not a wireless keyboard. I see little benefit to getting rid of the wire on my keyboard since I don't need my keyboard to move so the wire never gets in the way.

Good luck to any hackers who want to derive meaningful information out of my mouse movements and clicks. Without knowing what's on the screen at any given moment, that information is next to useless. I know it's possible to spy on Van Eck radiation to read what's on a monitor from a distance but the equipment required to do so is either expensive or complicated to build. It's also a non-trivial problem to tie what's on the screen at that moment (an analog signal) with what's being typed. I'm quite satisfied that the barriers to that my monitor and mouse emanations being compromised are sufficiently high to discourage all but the most determined hacker. Realistically, you can never make something 100% secure. All you can hope to do is to raise the barriers high enough to nudge them along to easier targets. Rest assured that there are many easier targets. I can see 2 completely unsecured WiFi networks from my house and I suspect this is constrained by the distance between houses more than anything.