Being lazy, it happened that I did not backup my data. Yes, it is a shame, but inserting a drive and launching the commands to rsync the discs was preventing me from this best practice.

So, I decided to make it automatic. The goal was that the only thing I would have to do would be to insert the drive, and then remove it when it is done.

Thanks to the magic of Gnu/Linux, it had been very easy. I will show below how I did it, thought they are many things that could be improved (but I haven’t felt the need so far).

Udev

Udev not only allows to create /dev entries dynamically, but offers a lot of triggers to perfom all kind of actions when some hardware is inserted.

The udevinfo command will show you a lot of output concerning your drive. What we want is a unique way to differenciate the backup drive from any other drive that will be inserted in the future.

What would be better than the manufacturer serial ?

So let’s look for it :

$ udevinfo -a -p /sys/block/sdc | grep serial

Copy the serial.

Now we have to create a rule file, that will tell to udev what to do when this particular drive is inserted.

This is done in the /etc/udev/rules.d folder. Let’s create a file 30-mnt.rules or anything you like.

We edit this file so that it contains :

ACTION=="add",KERNEL=="sd*",SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTRS{serial}=="57442D57584E3430394C5A38", RUN+="/home/jc/bin/backup/bckp-home.sh %k"

ACTION==”add” will tell udev that this action must be triggered when the drive is inserted.
SUBSYSTEMS could be changed according to the drive you are using (scsi, usb, …).
ATTRS{serial} must contain the serial you just grabbed.
RUN+=”/path/to/bin/backup.sh %k” tells udev to launch the backup script. %k, which contains the device name, sdc, is passed as an argument.

Optionally, it is quite convenient, you may want to make a symlink to the /dev/sd? device, with :

KERNEL=="sd*",SUBSYSTEMS=="scsi", ATTRS{model}=="GJ0250EAGSQ     ", SYMLINK+="ultrabay%n"

The shell script

Now, the script itself :

#!/bin/sh
LOGFILE=/PATH/TO/bckp.log
echo "--- BCKP - INFO : \$1=_${1}_" >>$LOGFILE
[[ $1 ]] || { echo "ERROR : missing parameter">>$LOGFILE; exit 1; }
# give time for the user, if needed to kill the process
sleep 6
MOUNT_PATH=$(grep $(echo $1) /etc/mtab | awk '{print $2}')
[[ $MOUNT_PATH ]] || { echo "ERROR fretching mount point">>$LOGFILE;
exit 1; }
echo " Synchronizing $MOUNT_PATH)">>$LOG
# add here all you rsync commands
rsync -av --delete /PATH/TO/DATA $MOUNT_PATH/backup/
...
exit 0

Testing it

Now, let’s reload udev :

$ sudo udevadm control --reload-rules

To test if it works :

$ sudo udevadm trigger

or maybe :

$ /etc/init.d/boot.udev restart

Plug off/in your drive, and the script should be executed as expected.

Optional : setting more options with Hal

It is not necessary at all for the backup script to work, but it would be very practical to have  a fixed mount point for a drive.
For instance, I use a second drive (in the untrabay slot of my thinkpad) that contains all my virtual machines.

The benefice is to prevent a performance drain of the system when many virtual machines are doing I/O like swapping or anything else.

Create a file like /etc/hal/fdi/policy/15-static-mount.fdi, containing :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
<device>
<match key="volume.uuid" string="aa0019ef-86e0-4011-b996-31ef3e7174c8">
<merge key="volume.policy.should_mount" type="bool">true</merge>
<merge key="volume.fstype" type="string">ext4</merge>
<strong><merge key="volume.policy.desired_mount_point" type="string">ultrabay</merge></strong>
<merge key="volume.label" type="string">Fuji</merge>
<merge key="volume.policy.mount_option.noatime" type="bool">true</merge>
<merge key="volume.policy.mount_option.acl" type="bool">true</merge>
</match>
</device>
</deviceinfo>

The drive is matched by it uuid. You can get the uuid of your disk with :

$ ls -la /dev/disk/by-uuid/

You can, if you want, set the volume label and specify several options of the file system.

However, the most interesting option is the “desired_mount_point” one which allow you to fix the mount point. In the example, the disk will always be mounted in /media/ultrabay, and not the system disk, or disk_1, etc.

Coming next !

That’s all for today folks. Let me know if there are some things not clear or that can be optimized.

Next time, we will see how to run the same script from Hal instead. We will also use Zenity to get a nice GUI prompt when the disk is inserted.

Very easy to set up :

$ zypper install mpg123

and it should work immediatly.

Cannot create link /etc/mtab~
Perhaps there is a stale lock file?

As a result, some of the partitions were not mounted and the system was pretty much broken.

But, no need to panic, just erase all the lock files (be careful not to erase the mtab file itself !) :

$ rm /etc/mtab~*

Now test mounting your partitions to check that you don’t get this message anymore :

$ mount -a

If it is alright, reboot and it should be fine.

This distribution is, by far, the best Linux environment for a desktop PC : very stable, up to date, polished, professional…

I also appreciate the huges improvements made on Yast and the package management system. Despite being an advanced user that like to use the command line, I reallly appreciate sometimes to have a nice graphical frontend that just do what I want easely and quickly.

openSUSE 11.1 deserves its increasing popularity. Really, give it a try !

The first surprising thing was the file I downloaded. It is now not anymore a tar.gz archive but a .bundle file.

After downloading, as root, just make it executable or start it with sh :

% sh VMware-Workstation-6.5.0-118166.x86_64.bundle

It now starts a graphic installer, that takes care of everything. All the compilation process is now hidden to the user.

I was expecting the compilation to fail and that I would have to look for a patch to run on my edge Linux kernel. Indeed, I just compiled 2.6.26 kernel (64 bits) a few days ago.

But nothing like that. the process went smoothly.

However, I was still prudent. Even after a compiling, previous versions almost always required some patch to get full networking to work.

So I gave a try and launch one of my virtual machines. Surprise : all worked out of the box !

For the first time, I even did not need any vmware-any-any patch or any network patched vmmon and vmnet modules to get wifi networking operational.

I also quickly noticed some very nice and fancy features :

• 3D graphics support
• more devices supported : fingerprint reader device, audio driver for Vista, …
• a graphical virtual network settings editor : this utility had been for ages on the Windows version and finally will make your easier on Linux

At last, but not least, the Unity display mode.

Though I am not a Mac user, I believe this can be compared to VMWare Fusion. Anyway, it allows you to display the virtual machines programs within your X session.

Look at this screenshot :

The result is quite spectacular. On my Gnome desktop, I am now able to display some windows from Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Well, this is not yet perfectly smooth or artifact free, but this is already really usable and responsive enough to be used intensively.

Another limit is the operating system support. So far, among my virtual machines, I was able to do it with Windows systems but not Open Solaris for instance.

There must have been more improvements, more or less visible, that I am not aware of. I won’t go for a full review.

I just wanted to insist that if you are a VMWare user,  you really should consider to upgrade for the complete support of the latest kernel and the Unity feature.

It seems that VMWare has listened to the Linux users, or at least is taking it more seriously. Not that they are nice, but the competitors are close (Virtual box, KVM, Xen…) !

Actually it changes the contrast for all the environment, and of course using Mplayer or the gstreamer test program just after also gave back a black screen.

Therefore I had been convinced it was a driver issue (reporting a bug to Nvidia and posting on this forum), until I find the contrast setting of Totem was the cause of all that mess.

Note that I am right now using Debian Lenny.