Author: Ryan

win7 system restore … aaarrrrgggh

Ryanjunctions, system restore, user directory, win7

Warning: this is mainly me just ranting about Microsoft stupidity and a warning for anyone using junctions.

About a month or two ago I built myself a new PC (old one was dying) and installed Win7 on it.  Since I was previously still on WinXP there were a few things to get used to, but all in all I enjoyed the update. There were of course some strange Windows pitfalls involved, moving your users directory to a different drive really isn’t straightforward, but works if you use junctions to link the directories.

Since Virtualbox drops the guests in a subfolder of the users directory I decided to move my users directory to one of the larger mechanical disks in my system, to keep the windows drive (a SSD disk) with plenty of space.

Now fast forward to yesterday, where some software I installed decided to clear out most of my Start->All Programs folder, leaving me with lots of installed softawre, and no Start Menu links. After trying some stuff out I finally caved in and used System Restore to get my Start Menu working again. System Restore actually worked fine, I got my Start Menu back … unfortunately it also corrupted my profile, and while googling to find out how to fix it I found a whole lot of people with the same problem.

Junction + User directory + System Restore = corrupt user, non repairable. Hello Microsoft, this is all original system software, no 3rd party stuff, breaking my user is totally uncool.

So after trying all kinds of crazy tips I found I gave up and followed the official instructions (a.k.a. You are fucked, haha bye bye user registry). And right now I am copying stuff from my old profile to my new one and setting up all the software that had stored stuff in the registry. This time my Profile stays on C: without any junctions, it’s easier to repair Virtualbox if it breaks over the images being in a non-standard path than worrying about windows corrupting my whole profile if I touch System Restore.

How to add file versions/history to iFolder

Ryanfiles, history, iFolder, sync

I’ve been using iFolder for about a month now and am pretty satisfied with the performance and features, but there is one feature I dearly miss: having access to older versions of a file.  To work around this problem I simply created a SVN repository for every iFolder user.  This allows the users to “check in” files whenever they want to save a specific version of a file, they can tell SVN to ignore directories that they don’t need or want in the SVN system. And you can easily browse through the history of a file, pulling up versions from specific dates, or seeing what changed when in the file (obviously not for binary data).

I am fully aware that SVN may be a bit overkill and that I am only using a very small subset of the SVN features, but on the other hand it is very easy to set up, and there are clients for all the major OS out there that integrate seamlessly into the file managers. So even if I don’t need all the bells and whistles it does what I need it to do without any worries.

As with all workarounds this of course brings some limitations and implications with it.

  • First of all you will only have the history of a file on systems with a svn client, so no history if you are accessing the files via webinterface.
  • Situations where multiple people have access to the same files must be set up in the same consellation in SVN to ensure all users have access to file histories
  • Due to the usage of two systems (iFolder and SVN) the files will be stored in both systems
Depending on your setup and needs the implications may turn out to be a dealbreaker. But if not it may be a viable “addon” to add some features you otherwise missed. I’m not going to go into “how to setup SVN”, since anything I write would be tuned to a specific installation. Just use google, there are plenty of Howtos out there, just find the one that meets your system.

How to install ruby 1.9.2 on Ubuntu 10.04

Ryan3 Comments on How to install ruby 1.9.2 on Ubuntu 10.04bash, Debian, LTS, ruby, Ubuuntu

The current LTS version of Ubuntu is 10.04 and the most current version of ruby it ships with is 1.9.1. Unfurtunately 1.9.1 wasn’t that great of a release and anyone using the 1.9 branch really should use the stable 1.9.2.

After doing a bit of researching I found some information on how the best approach to get ruby installed is. Downloading the source, compiling it and registering the installed version with the package manager.

The following little bash script takes care of installing ruby 1.9.2 on a ubuntu or debian based system (or any other version if you change the $Version variable in the script). The script just consolidates information found online and wraps it up into a nice bashscript

 

Using iFolder as an open source Dropbox alternative

Ryan8 Comments on Using iFolder as an open source Dropbox alternativeDropbox, files, iFolder, Internet Stuff, sync

I’ve had a few posting here in my blog over the years about trying to keep data synced over various computers. Nowadays it has gotten easier since it seems everyone is chruning out their own online storage. Classics like Dropbox or SugarSync, and then we have the big companies  Google, Microsoft and Ubuntu trying their luck. Basically they all provide you with 2-5Gb free storage, and more space and features for more money. But they all have one downside, whether encrypted or not, you are leaving your own files to the mercy of an external company. There is not really any voodoo in the whole system, basically you just have some space online, a bit of encryption, and some way to ensure that all clients of a user are synced, nonetheless building your own service can be a hassle as I have found out.

Currently I’m using SVN as a workaround. I just sometimes forget to commit, which leads to me having old data and no access to updated files. Instead of starting from scratch and build strange stuff with rsync I had a look if there were any open source solutions out there. And I was pleased to find a few. Unfortunately they are almost all in the “I have an idea and a few mockups” stage, maybe even some beta version that does something, but nothing really “production” level. Another downside was that most of them either supported Linux or Windows, but often not both.

One open source solution I stumbled across is iFolder,  seasoned software supported by Novell, with clients for Windows, Linux and Mac. And if all else fails you can use the web interface to access your files. Admin and User web interface are both easy to use. I don’t remember how I stumbled across it, but I do know that it’s not one of the main products you see named when searching for alternatives to Dropbox.

If you have SuSE as an OS, then installing the software is immensely simplified due to SuSE belonging to Novell, just follow the SuSE instructions on the website. I prefer debian based installations and found Ubuntu instructions at help.ubuntu.com that were written mainly for Ubuntu, but should work with any debian deviate.

I’m not going to repeat anything from the installation instructions, they already did a fine job of documenting everything. One thing is important however: the Client 3.8.0.0 just plain doesn’t work. unfortunately it is the one linked from the website. Go to the sourceforge repository, and download the newer 3.8.03 client. That one works like a charm.