Uncompatible Systems

Working with FreeBSD made me realize how dependent I am on Debian. I’m sure there are copious ways to get all the nice GNU/Linux userland stuff running through ports but part of me like to stick to the simplest way, which is to install Debian and not worry about it.

I feel like I’m in some kind of old/new skool purgatory. All the old skool hackers are into BSD and scoff at Linux, yet now I’m acting like an old curmudgeon whilst yearning for the new.

Backup solution!

code:~# ls -1 /etc/backup.d/
70-selections.sh
80-backup.rdiff
90-s3put.sh


• 70-selections.sh is a shell script to backup the dpkg database to a file
• 80-backup.rdiff makes incremental backups of the important directories
• 90-s3put.sh archives everything and uses the fabulous s3sync ruby scripts to put it in s3 as a single asset.

Restoring requires getting the asset out of s3, unarchiving and using rdiff-backup to restore.

Networked, secure, encrypted authentication system. Finally!

1. Generate a key pair on local machine.
2. Add private key to ssh-agent via ssh-add, which is running by default on OS X (10.5) and Debian
3. Add public key to authorized_keys on remote end
4. Disable interactive password login on remote end
5. Add user to sudoers file to gain root access
6. Use rsync to backup home directory on local machine to USB keychain

That’s the system. To allow access to a second remote machine, all you have to do is get your public key up there and use the private key on the keychain. If you’re on a box with a real OS (read: one with ssh-agent running) you can just add the private key from the USB keychain via ssh-add and login securely from anywhere.

So…it’s almost friday and I’ve made lots of progress with this new-fangled Linux virtualization. To recap:

• Installing the kernel modules for hardware virtualization
• Installing the base OS
• Configuring serial console
• Bridging the network
• Unique networking per guest
• XML confirguration per guest
• Guest management via virsh
• Autostart guests at host boot

So that’s a wrap…for now. More advanced subjects will be suspending, cloning and balloning memory per guest. I don’t need to worry about that ATM.