Aigarius Blog

With great help from Ouattara Oumar Aziz an new version of SBackup is shaping up in the svn repo and a day ago I created a public beta version - 0.10.4~beta10 which can be downloaded here.
Please report any bugs or regressions to Sourceforge bug tracker. Also an update for translations and new translations can be added. You can either translate in Launchpad or download the template file from the SVN. But beware that there are more translations in Launchpad then in the SVN at the moment, so check there first.
If no blocker bugs are found, we could see a new stable release of SBackup in a weeks time. I am sure that a lot of people will be happy to hear that :).

Edit: For some reason, the DEB on the Sourceforge site was cut to third of its size, I uploaded a new version, it should be fine now. And by popular request here is a screenshot, note that by using simple timing the /etc/cron.{daily,weekly,monthly} folders are used and thus anacron runs the backups if the computer was off at the scheduled time.

Popularity: 41% [?]

You know that you haven’t blogged in a while, when you realize that you have changed your address twice since the last post.

Changes in my life since last post:
* finished my Masters paper and submitted it, waiting for viva now :S
* moved back to Latvia, lived for some time with parents (and no Internet) and now moved into an apartment in Riga - great place
* working on projects to make living
* got my camera stolen at some point during my move from UK to Latvia, and my finances will not allow to replace it this year ;(
* another person is contributing heavily to SBackup and is single-handedly doing the bulk of the bug fixing for a new stable release of SBackup !
* another patent treat is looming (EPLA - a united patent court under EPO), but this time we are asked for our opinion by our government - nice change of pace there

Popularity: 29% [?]

Justification.

Currently there is a huge mess of files and folders that start with a “.” in any users home folder. There is no structure or policy on how applications should choose file and folder names for data that needs to be stored in users home directory. Additionally there is no established consistency between Gnome, KDE and most other applications. Gnome application have part of their configuration information in gconf folder and other part in a gnome subfolder. KDE applications have a complex structure under .kde/. And most other applications either have one file directly in users home folder or have their own dot-folder there.

Problems.

There are two major problems with current ad-hoc approach:

1. Namespace pollution of users home space. In any desktop system “ls -al” in the home folder would be a very lengthy affair. Moreeven this namespace is folded - KDE and Gnome apps live in their own subfolders.
2. Lack of structure in folders makes it much harder to properly understand their purpose. For example, if a user has misconfigured an application and would like to reset it to default settings, it currently could be hard to figure out how to do that. Especially without losing his data in that application.

Proposal.

I propose to implement a policy on where an application can store data and configuration information in users home folder. Such specification would be proposed as an extension for FHS, first implemented in Debian and then promoted for inclusion upstream and in other distributions.

Structure.

I propose a following structure for a users home folder:

• data/appname/ - each application, that stores user data in application-specific format, will have to store this data into this folder. Only configuration information that is essential to load this data would be permitted into this folder (in hidden dot files). For example, Evolution could store emails and email access information here.
• .conf/appname/ - each application that stores any configuration information whould have to store all of it in this folder. GConf will have to also store applications configuration info here. If this folder would be deleted, application must revert to default configuration, but still be able to fully access user data in data/appname/ or other, generic folders (below). For example, if .conf/evolution/ is erased, then on next start-up Evoution should still be able to access all email that is stored in data/evolution/ without any configuration wizards.
• .tmp/appname/ - each application that would need to create temporary files that survive reboot, would put them here. These folders can be safely deleted at any time with no data or configuration loss. For example, Firefox cache information and Nautilus thumbnail cache would have to be here.
• Desktop/ - the desktop folder, just like it is now
• Media folders - (Documents/, Photos/, Videos/, Music/, …) a suggestion of basic document structure for user to use or ignore. Applications dealing with particular media types would default to use files from such folders, but should also cope with working with any other folders on users choice. For example, a screensaver with slideshow function would by default use photos from Photos/, but will have to have a configuration option for user to change that setting.
• Additionally I would propose having a .mounts/ folder where applications could mount user specific media and other mounts, such as FUSE. For example, FUSE could be used for automatic archive introspection.

Benefits

The main benefit for such system for me is twofold:

• SBackup can be configured to exclude .tmp/ and .mounts/ by default thus saving significant space in backups.
• A tool can be made to restore settings and/or data for specific applications in an uniform fashion.

So, any suggestions on the idea and on where this should be best discussed?

Popularity: 100% [?]

All the time since the Debian I18N conference in Extremadura I was moving around, staying in temporary places having temporary accesses to restricted Internet connections. Finally yesterday I got everything back - a permanent place to stay and a good permanent and unrestricted Internet connection there. Now I just need to compensate for the productivity loss that it is causing me

P.S. There have been two bugfix releases of SBackup since my last blog post about it - bugs such as “having no regexes skips all files” and “always do incremental upgrades because we can not count” are fixed. Priority of SBackup process is reduced and configuration files are managed explicitly.

Popularity: 34% [?]

Get it while it’s hot! It has been uploaded to Debian and will get to the mirrors in a day or two, but if you really want it now, then grab 0.10 release from Sourceforge.

The last version of SBackup was released in last November so this has been long overdue, that is why I want to extend many thanks to Jonh Wendell, who reignited my motivation for SBackup. A large part of this release is his work.

We finally have two out of three most requested features: i18n and purging of old backups. Now the progress indication is the big thing people still want to see. And also lots and lots of small cornercase bugs have been fixed, some of them required rewriting chunks f the code, some others were oneliners that bothered many people.

I am very proud of this release and I am looking forward to what we can do for 0.11, one small step at a time.

P.S. I have already received emails of congratulation about the release and a bug report requesting the new version in Debian. Needless to say that the package has been uploaded and will go out in the next mirror push.

Popularity: 30% [?]

Reasons:
* more testing for the new restore backend and of the purge function are needed to ensure that they work as expected in all expected situations;
* I need more time to review a last minute patch to add autotools support to SBackup and decide if I want that or not;
* My primary notebook is coming back from Dell Service tomorrow and I need it to test the upgrading of the package in Debian (and not just Ubuntu that I have on my old/secondary notebook).

So, translators, you still have time - go here or here to translate. Also beta testers might venture ahead and check out the SVN trunk version. There still might be some bugs lurking there, however, so YMMV.

Popularity: 35% [?]

My plea has been answered by a DVFS project specification. For some strange reason, my edits do not show up in the freedesktop.org wiki page and the blog of its creator is not reachable, so I post it here.

I am very interested to help develop this tool and then use it in Simple Backup Suit (sbackup). An additional feature that I would love to see is automatic splitting of a file into several chunks. In an ideal work it would be possible for me to get (in Python) a filehandle-like object that would compress the data (gzip/bzip/..), encrypt it (with simple encr. or gpg style), transfer it over network (ssh/ftp/dav/smb/…) and then split into 100 Mb pieces on the remote server (to overcome possible max filesize problems with 10,50 or 100 Gb backups). And have the freedom of flexibility of activation of each element of this chain when creating the file handle. Also the interface must react in exactly the same manner regardless or the backed being user (for example opening non-existing files must always rise the same error).

Popularity: 29% [?]


$ mv .ssh/ .ssh.old/
$ python
>>>import gnomevfs
>>> gnomevfs.get_file_info( "ssh://aigarius:password@aigarius.com/home/aigarius" )
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
gnomevfs.AccessDeniedError: Access denied
>>>
$ ssh aigarius.com
The authenticity of host 'aigarius.com (85.254.216.40)' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is 6d:29:c0:f3:d0:84:c9:a9:d9:4c:7e:e3:1a:18:a2:e2.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
Warning: Permanently added 'aigarius.com,85.254.216.40' (RSA) to the list of known hosts.
aigarius@aigarius.com's password: *******
[...]
aigarius.com$ exit
$ python
>>>import gnomevfs
>>> gnomevfs.get_file_info( “ssh://aigarius:password@aigarius.com/home/aigarius” )
<gnomevfs .FileInfo ‘aigarius’>
>>>


Of course, this is mentioned nowhere in the sparse documentation. Please keep me away from the person who wrote GnomeVFS and its Python bindings. Bloodshed might ensue. Bug reported

Why can’t someone write a nice, light, working network file transfer protocol abstraction library that would be independent of any desktop environment (bonus) and a working X server (I am looking at you, GnomeVFS). Something that would simply provided all file and folder manipulation operations in sync and async ways in such way that those operations work completely uniformly across all supported protocols. Support for at least ssh and ftp is essential, webdav, nfs, rsync and other protocols that allow writing files to remote locations and http, https and other protocols that only allow read only access to remote files would be very welcome. The library should be in C with bindings in C++, Python, Perl, Ruby, PHP and also a command line processor that would allow all commands to be used in a shell script.
Why something like this can not be written and obsolete the GnomeVFS and those KIOslaves. Freedesktop.org, I am looking at you, please!

Update: Apparently I only need to “import gnome.ui” and execute “gnome.ui.authentication_manager_init()” and my application will automagically get a proper authentication dialog in this case. Unfortunately it is not documented anywhere that I could find.

Popularity: 46% [?]

Here is the first screenshot of a new tab in the SBackup configuration that allows you to automatically erase old backups. There are two options: plain and simple “keep backups for X days and then erase them” or the smart (and default) progressive trimming option in which you have more backups of recent times and fewer backups of less recent times.
Now that the interface is up, I will be coding the part that actually does the trimming. The tricky part is dealing with incremental backups in progressive purge scenario. I will need to do a lot of testing to insure that I get it right, before I release it.

ObNotebook: A happy DHL courier woke me up today and picked up my laptop. I kept the harddrive. The courier said that usually Dell guys return the notebooks on the third day, so I could hope to get my laptop back on Wednesday.

Popularity: 19% [?]

I spent the whole day today investigating and fixing SBackup bugs and adding new features. The 0.10 release will be da bomb! My current plan is to spend 10 more hours on this tomorrow and after that I will declare a feature and string freeze for 0.10 and will give the translators a day or two to make/update their translations.

And at the same time I will be figuring out a good systematic way to test a SBackup release. It is an important package, but it has no automatic or even manual tests, which is not nice at all. So while translators will be translatig, I will be testing.

Ah, and this blaze of activity is thanks to both Jonh who contributed i18n code and some fixed to SBackup a few days ago (I hope he will continue contributing in the long term) and a brakedown of my primary laptop which makes it hard for me to do my university work. (I had no backups configured there yet :P)

Popularity: 15% [?]