I added JungleDisk (my current favorite) to the brief synopsis of backup software. I highly recommend JungleDisk, especially for Linux users. Another excellent Linux backup solution is Rsync.net. They support numerous Linux (as well as other) solutions and have some of the best customer support I have encountered. Unfortunately for by 400 GB backup sets the price becomes a little high.

For those in a Windows environment take a look at DataDepositBox. There software is a breeze to use and managing multiple accounts painless. ... Click to read more

During routine maintenance I noticed that CPAN was failing operate properly and giving me an error I had not seen before.

Undefined subroutine &Compress::Zlib::gzopen called at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/CPAN.pm line 5721

This may have happened when I installed awstats on my CentOS5 VPS. It grabbed a yum for Compress::Zlib. I suspect something
odd happened and and now CPAN fails. I lack the time right now to track this down for sure.

The fix is to manually bring things into compliance. ... Click to read more

Spent the weekend a bit under the weather so I decided to take a crack at centralized administration to multiple Drupal sites. The task is in internal BETA and the documentation is pre-Alpha (being its incomplete, probably has errors and is otherwise very rough). You can see the notes so far at Drupal configurations. I am pretty pleased with the results, having learned quite a bit about Apache reverse proxies and yet more about some Drupal internals.

If during the upgrade to int_meta-6.x-1.0-beta2 you encounter:

user warning: You have an error in your SQL syntax;
check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax
to use near 'NOT NULL' at line 1 query:
   ALTER TABLE int_meta_fields ALTER combine SET NOT NULL ... 

Enter the following query into mySQL using whatever tool is available to you (I use the command line MySQL utility). ... Click to read more

Not expecting to be here? Please read on …

It has been an eternity, but I finally carved out the time to migrate the most popular items from our experimental Drupal 4.7 site to our shiny new Drupal 6 site. More content still awaits migration, namely video astronomy, but most of the technical elements are present.

This task was complicated by the experimental nature of the old install. It was one of the very first Drupal configurations we did, and as such was a hodgepodge of settings, modules and hacks to make it do what we thought it should. ... Click to read more

A couple of “critical” updates I received on 7/11/2007 failed to install. The update is in regards to .net:

• KB92836

• KB92835

The following is the procedure I finally used to fix the problem. It is tedious and I am not alone in being adversely affected by this update. This is not the first time that a Microsoft update has bit me. I may have to turn off updates until they are proven to work. Having systems go down without notification due to a failed update is not acceptable. ... Click to read more

1. You may wish to clone your drive first.

Research into online backup tools

Update 2008-11-06: I have been using JungleDisk for multiple client systems including Linux, Linux servers and Windows. It works very well, is much cheaper for large data sets than DataDepositBox. The downside is its relatively week sub-account management compared to DataDepositBox. But for the 400 GB of storage I now have the savings using S3 make the transition worth it. ... Click to read more

Congratulations to all who worked on Soundsnap. The site launched this morning with approx 30,000 sound samples, all free for use. It streams previews using MP3, and the original high quality sounds are available as WAV or AIFF. ... Click to read more

I recently had a major problem installing the latest Nvidia drivers from my EVGA 7950 GT. The drivers appeared to install but did not. Uninstalling the Nvidia drivers, a recommended step, did not help. After much Internet searching I successfully installed the drivers. ... Click to read more

Today I awoke to find GoogleMaps not working reliable on my unlocked Blackberry 8800 via the T-Mobile network. After reading rumors about T-Mobile locking down the wap.voicestream.com APN I decided to switch to internet2.voicestream.com. This APN becomes accessible only if you have an Internet data plan. ... Click to read more