Windows 7 upgrade could take 20+ hours (reasons to do a clean install)
My Clippings September 12th, 2009 by System
Automatically pulled from My Clippings on NewsGator Online
Filed under: OS Updates, Windows
There are generally two ways to upgrade a computer from one Windows operating system to a newer version. You can either backup all of your data, do a clean install, and then reinstall all of your programs and copy all of your data back to the hard drive, or you can do an “upgrade” which should keep your files, settings, and all compatible programs intact.
Now, reading those two descriptions, you would think that the latter would be faster and easier. And indeed, for many users, it is easier. But it’s rarely faster.
In fact, in recent tests, it turned out that it could take more than 20 hours to upgrade a system from Windows Vista SP1 to Windows 7. To be fair, it could also take as little as 27 minutes. But if you’ve got a ton of data and applications loaded on your computer, you might be better off backing up your data and/or partitioning your hard drive and doing a clean install.
The test systems that had the fastest upgrade times had 20 applications installed and about 70GB of data stored on the hard drive. On these systems, it doesn’t take much longer to upgrade from Windows Vista than it does to do a clean install, even on a relatively slow computer.
But if you want to check the test results and see if you can spend 20 hours upgrading your system all you’ll need is a computer with 650Gb of data, 40 applications installed, a 2.6GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual core 5200+ CPU, 2Gb of RAM, a 7200RPM hard drive, and the 32-bit version of Windows Vista SP1.
[via Engadget]
Windows 7 upgrade could take 20+ hours (reasons to do a clean install) originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 12 Sep 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Tags: backup, email, Google, Inc., IO, Microsoft, php, script, Vista, way, wind, XP
Ubuntu Community Manager Responds to Our Wishlist [Lifehacker Wishlist]
My Clippings September 11th, 2009 by System
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We busted out our web soapbox earlier this week and detailed five features we want to see in Ubuntu. The Linux distribution’s community manager, Jono Bacon, wrote a thoughtful, informative response, which details and links what’s being done on a few of the fronts we considered crucial. Bacon explains and shows a screenshot of what’s happening with the Ubuntu Software Store (not pictured above, mind you), notes Ubuntu backer Canonical’s efforts in the design field, and writes that cloud-based backup, particularly Ubuntu One, is going to see “new and exciting development” in the next six months. He also points to some video editors “on the horizon,” which are promising, if still not quite average-user-friendly yet.
Update: Jono’s blog appears to have taken a hit from our link (sorry, Jono!), but Linux.com has a mirror post with the full text, and Google has it cached. Thanks for the links, SunitPolecat and Helen McGee!
Sync MySQL Servers via secure SSH-tunnel
My Clippings September 4th, 2009 by System
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$ ssh -f -L3307:127.0.0.1:3306 -N -t -x user@host sleep 600 ; mk-table-sync --execute --verbose u=root,p=xxx,h=127.0.0.1,P=3307 u=root,p=xxx,h=localhost
I wanted to keep a backup of my company database server on my local homeserver. After I found maatkit to sync databases, everything except security seemed fine. SSH takes care of that part.
by David Winterbottom (codeinthehole.com)
Repair Damaged Drives With Linux
My Clippings September 4th, 2009 by System
Automatically pulled from My Clippings on NewsGator Online
When you’re used to the world of Windows or OS X, Linux can seem a little unforgiving. Not only does command-line access hand over the complete keys to the manor to any unwitting user with access to the administrator’s account, there’s rarely a safety net should things go wrong. Despite advances in most Linux desktops (where the ubiquitous Trashcan safely buffers deleted files), you get no such protection from most system-specific configuration, installation and maintenance tools. And while it’s rare for anything to go wrong without your direct input, some accidents do happen, especially if you enjoy tinkering with the latest distro release each month. But this being Linux, there’s plenty you can do to dig yourself out of a hole, which is why it’s always a good idea to have a repair-worthy distribution close to hand when performing configuration and installation tasks.
One of the best developments in recent years has been the Live CD. These offer a fully functional Linux installation that runs from an optical drive. If you’ve got enough memory, you can even install new packages to the RAM disk just as you would when completing a standard installation. This makes a recent release of a Live CD-based installer like Ubuntu Jaunty the perfect system recovery tool. Not only does it include every package you might require, but because it runs from the optical drive rather than the hard drive, your data isn’t touched and there’s no chance files will be overwritten without direct input. It’s the obvious place to start when you get stuck.
Booting Linux
Probably the most common problem is when the Linux boot menu disappears or gets corrupted. The most likely reason for this is that a shared Windows installation has re-stamped its authority over your disk’s master boot record, overwriting the Grub boot loader with its own system-launching code. In these cases, you need to boot into a different Linux environment, either off a Live CD or from any other Linux booting media you can get hold of. The distribution you choose will also need to have Grub installed.
Tags: backup, blockquote, Build, flash, Information, IO, Linux, Microsoft, recovery, Sudo, Trash, Ubuntu, Vista, way, wind
LicenseCrawler Retrieves License Keys for Backup [Downloads]
My Clippings August 27th, 2009 by System
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Windows: LicenseCrawler is a portable and free tool for retrieving serial numbers and product keys from your computer. A simple scan with LicenseCrawler ensures you’ll never be left trying to reinstall software without the proper key.
LicenseCrawler doesn’t do anything you couldn’t do yourself, it just does it much faster and without you actually having to open up your registry editor. The application scans over your Windows registry file, without altering it, and looks for instances of serial numbers, license keys, and other identifying bits of information.
It found a number of licenses on our test system, but it if the application in question doesn’t store its product key in the registry—instead in the program or application data folder—LicenseCrawler will miss it.
Have a handy tool for keeping track of and searching out product keys? Lets hear about it in the comments. LicenseCrawler is freeware, Windows only.
Tags: backup, Information, IO, php, serial number, wind
Connecticut man consults Apple Genius and gets arrested
My Clippings August 25th, 2009 by System
Automatically pulled from My Clippings on NewsGator Online
Filed under: Odds and ends, PowerMac G5
A Fairfield, Connecticut man took his Apple G5 desktop to the Genius Bar at the Stamford Town Center store complaining about some issues with his image file thumbnails. It seemed some thumbnails were overwriting thumbnails on other images and they didn’t match up.
According to court documents, the Genius started examining the files, and allegedly found pictures of naked juvenile girls in suggestive poses.
The tech called a policeman who was stationed at the mall, and the customer Raymond Miller was promptly arrested and charged with possession of child pornography. If convicted, Miller faces a minimum of 5 years in jail.
Police also searched Miller’s home, but found nothing illegal.
Remember, when you bring your Mac into a store for service the technicians will likely see whatever is on your machine in the course of repairing it.
The tech could have ignored the alleged porn, but that could likely make him an accessory under some state laws. Apple warns people to always have a good backup of their data when they bring something in for repair. It’s also a good idea to remove anything you don’t want anyone else to see — financial data or home inventories, for example.
This incident is reminiscent of 2 cases in Florida where the Best Buy Geek Squad techs found illegal porn on computers brought in for repair. The employees reported the porn, and both men were arrested.
Then in an ironic turnabout, a three-month investigation by the Consumerist blog caught Geek Squad employees taking porn off a computer and sharing it with others. It was also alleged that some employees routinely stole music, pictures and other data from computers that were in for repair by copying the data off to personal thumb drives.
Via The Stamford Advocate and thanks to Doug for the tip.
TUAWConnecticut man consults Apple Genius and gets arrested originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 25 Aug 2009 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
How-To: Create Custom CSS Email Signatures on the iPhone
My Clippings August 21st, 2009 by System
Automatically pulled from My Clippings on NewsGator Online
Previously, I discussed how to create custom CSS email signatures for Mail in Mac OS X. This week, we are going to take a look at what it takes to replicate the same signature on your iPhone.
What You Will Need
- Your Mac
- Your iPhone (it needs to be jailbroken)
- PlistEdit Pro (or another application capable of editing plists)
- Coda (or another application for editing HTML)
Before We Begin
To use a custom CSS signature, we will be modifying a preference file on your iPhone. Simply using copy and paste within the new 3.0 OS will not maintain the HTML and formatting of our signature. Your iPhone should already be jailbroken and capable of mounting as an Apple File Protocol (AFP) share on your Mac. For instructions on this process, see here.
Step One
Once you have logged into your iPhone over AFP, browse to the following location:
/private/var/mobile/Library/Preferences
Copy the file com.apple.mobilemail.plist to your Mac. Go ahead and duplicate this file, appending “backup” to the end of the filename so you have a clean copy in case something goes wrong.
Step Two
Open your email signature that we created (see the original post here) in your HTML editor and copy the contents to the clipboard.
Step Three
Use PlistEdit Pro to open the file you coped earlier in Step One. Towards the bottom of the list, you will see an entry called “SignatureKey”. The value for this string will match your current iPhone signature.
Double click this value to highlight the contents and delete what is there. Now paste the HTML code for your email signature that we copied in Step Two. Save this file back to your desktop.
Step Four
Browse back to the Preferences folder on your iPhone. Copy our new edited plist file and replace the original on your iPhone.
Step Five
All done! Create a new email and you should see your HTML email signature at the bottom.
Limitations
Unfortunately due to limitations in the iPhone 3.0 OS, Mail on the iPhone only supports one signature. There are third party applications available on the App Store that address this issue, but I have not tested them with HTML email signatures. Hopefully in a future OS update, Apple will allow users to have unique signatures for multiple mail accounts.
Tags: Apple, backup, css, email, IO, Mac, php, Signatures, WordPress
Xmarks testing bookmark, password sync for Google Chrome browser
My Clippings August 19th, 2009 by System
Automatically pulled from My Clippings on NewsGator Online
Sure, Google began rolling out the ability to synchronize your bookmarks across various instances of the Google Chrome browser yesterday. And that means you can make sure that your bookmarks are up to date on your home and work computers, as well as your netbook, home theater PC, and any other machines you happen to have that are running Google Chrome. But what if you want to keep your Chrome bookmarks synchronized with your Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Safari bookmarks?
Xmarks makes a popular plugin for those browsers that lets you not only backup and synchronize your bookmarks, but also your saved passwords. That means you can create a bookmark or save your login and password information for a site in Firefox on one computer, load Internet Explorer on the same PC or another, and have the same passwords and bookmarks.
And now Xmarks is working on a Google Chrome plugin. Of course, the stable version of Chrome doesn’t support plugins yet, so you’ll need to use the developer channel version of Chrome. If you’re already using Chrome, one of the easiest ways to switch channels is to use the Google Channel Changer and then when Chrome checks for updates it will install the latest developer build.
Xmarks for Chrome is still in the early alpha stages. You can sign up to request an invitation. But you should keep in mind that we’re talking about using a pre-release plugin on a pre-release browser, so don’t expect a flawless user experience at this point.
Xmarks testing bookmark, password sync for Google Chrome browser originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 18 Aug 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Tags: backup, Build, Chromium, email, Google, Inc., Information, IO, Mac, php, way, XP
Creating Backups With luckyBackup On An Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop
My Clippings August 19th, 2009 by System
Automatically pulled from My Clippings on NewsGator Online
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Creating Backups With luckyBackup On An Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop
This tutorial explains how to install and use luckyBackup
on an Ubuntu 9.04 desktop. luckyBackup is an application for data
back-up and synchronization powered by the rsync tool. It is simple to
use, fast (transfers over only changes made and not all data), safe
(keeps your data safe by checking all declared directories before
proceeding in any data manipulation ), reliable and fully customizable.
CloneDVD 2.9.2.5 Beta & 2.9.2.2 Multilingual
My Clippings August 14th, 2009 by System
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CloneDVD makes perfect backup copies of your unprotected movie DVDs, with just 3 clicks and in less than 20 minutes! without installation.
Download Portable CloneDVD2 Beta on RapidShare (4.2 MB)
Download Portable CloneDVD2 on WHFF (4.2 MB)
Extract and run CloneDVD2Portable.
Settings of installed CloneDVD2 should be preserved.
