My laptop runs Linux, so I wanted to write a very simple script to backup my home area, and anything else that might be important. There are many of these already on the web, but it was interesting and useful for me to write myself one as frankly it is not very hard.
Continue reading [code] A very simple backup script for my laptop
So after 2 weeks of faffing I now have Debian running on my laptop, took rather more mucking about than it should have done. Just so I remember what I had to do here are some notes.
To get past UEFI secure boot I had to install Ubuntu, once that had successfully installed the grub boot loader, then I could install Debian non-free as the USB wifi dongle I was using was based on the Ralnk chipset, and that isn’t part of the standard package.
Once that was installed, you could add the distributions for back port and contrib and non-free to /etc/apt/sources.list also add support for 32 bit architecture and install firmware-iwlwifi
After all of that it seems to be working, which is a very good thing.
So I spent most of the weekend trying to dual boot my laptop so I could use Debian rather than Windows8.
Only a new thing has happened which is called uefi, and oddly pronounced like unity without the n. This is the new secure boot system, so strictly speaking isn’t Microsoft’s fault but they do seem to have used it to make booting anything that is windows a complete nightmare.
Annoyingly while I can boot the Debian boot USB image that can’t talk to my wireless network, (and my new laptop doesn’t have a Ethernet port, clearly shows when I last upgraded my laptop).
So I can’t try and download additional packages that might help. Or read the internet forums on the topic from within Linux.
So at the moment I am stuck with Windows8, so I had just better get to like it.
So I have now completed the recovery of my old laptop harddrive. Which took a while.
That was achieved by the manic words:
rsync -avz /home/russ user@backuphost:/backup/
The lack of a / after russ means that it also creates a russ directory.
Setting up rsnapshot would have been cooler, but not necessary in this instance.
Will have to make sure that I set that up on the next one. Or set up rsync to run on logoff.
Last week my laptop died, just refused to boot up, no blinky lights no beeps just nothing..
I mentioned this to a friend who frequents the computer boot sales to see if he had a dongle to let me read the old harddrive.. as while I had a backup, it wasn’t as recent as I headed it to be..*
Anyway he dismantled my old laptop to discover, that he didn’t have an adapter for an IDE laptop harddrive.
Fortunately he was going to a second hand sale, and would see what he could find.
That turned up a Dell Inspiron 4100, that has the same kind of harddrive, and similar internals, so that was purchased so that things could be recovered. Harddrive was inserted and debian has done an amazing job of recogniseing everything and booting up without any errors.
Brilliant I am saved.. Alas things are not that easy..
The transplant machine, only has 128gb of RAM, so is running like a dead dog, it also has no WiFi, which is possibly a good thing as I doubt that it has the power to be able to run such trickery.
So the process of rescuing my data is going to take forever, and then I will be taking both Laptops to the dump.
And then going shopping for something new and wizzy, which might be a mac, or a hackintosh.
* This is a fail Mr Russ you should be more organised.