Restoring a Debian Box

Here's a good method for saving and restoring a Debian installation. Of course, you have all data from /home on a partition of its own, and the configuration files in /etc are backed up. You naturally have saved a copy of your sources.list.

First, save the package states while the system is still working well:
dpkg --get-selections > (filename)

After a disaster, you can now restore the system to its original state: install a minimal system (no packages beyond the base system). Then:

dpkg --set-selections (filename)
apt-get dselect-upgrade
apt-get dist-upgrade
apt-get upgrade

Now you can just slam the configuration files to /etc from your backups.

Downgrading Packages in Debian

Here’s a method of downgrading debian from unstable to testing. Might work, might not.

From Travis Crump:

Package: *
Pin: release a=testing
Pin-Priority: 1001

in /etc/apt/preferences, and do an apt-get dist-upgrade, apt will happily try to downgrade every package to its testing
version[alternatively adding that to /etc/apt/preferences will let you do apt-get install without needing the version number]. It just isn’t guaranteed to work, and isn’t considered a bugif it doesn’t.

Backing Up Hard Disk Info

From clearthink

But in an effort to eliminate recurring errors, I strongly encourage users to include the output of the following commands in a log file or readme file added to your backups …

fdisk -l /dev/hda (/dev/hdb, /dev/hdc, … as needed)
dumpe2fs /dev/hda1 (once for *each* partition on hda. see output of fdisk above)
(do not do dumpe2fs on the swap partition)

The first command tells how your disk is partitioned. The second command includes all the technical data including the superblock locations. If this data is included on a tape or CD backup it canbe easily retrieved when you need it.

N-Up Printing with CUPS

Not all apps are N-Up friendly, but you can tell CUPS to print multiple pages on a single sheet. Here’s a tip I found on the Internet some time ago:

The -o number-up=value option selects N-Up printing. N-Up printing places multiple document pages on a single printed page. CUPS supports 1, 2, 4, 6, 9, and 16-Up formats; the default format is 1-Up:

lp -o number-up=1 filename ENTER
lp -o number-up=2 filename ENTER
lp -o number-up=4 filename ENTER
lpr -o number-up=16 filename ENTER

Perfection

With the new theme and a less insane layout, I’m willing to declare this site version 1.0, meaning there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it, and improvements are not necessary. As everything I do is always perfect, I don’t really expect to find many bugs or typos either. Thank you for your patience.

Moving everything to WordPress

I’ve been studying different blog software for a while in order to move my whole web existence to a blog style site. I’ve been using LiveJournal for a while, but it’s basically “just a blog”. Nothing wrong with that, but I fell in love with WordPress’ static pages and very sane categorizing feature.

I’ve still to choose a neat layout and theme (the page is a bit busy looking as it is), but I’ve managed to move everything under siltala.net and LiveJournal onto this single blog, so things are good so far.

Power

t0rbad> so there i was in this hallway right
BlackAdder> i believe i speak for all of us when i say…
BlackAdder> WRONG BTICH
BlackAdder> IM SICK OF YOU
BlackAdder> AND YOUR LAME STORIES
BlackAdder> NOBODY HERE THINKS YOURE FUNNY
BlackAdder> NOBODY HERE WANTS TO HEAR YOUR STORIES
BlackAdder> IN FACT
BlackAdder> IF YOU DIED RIGHT NOW
BlackAdder> I DON“T THINK NOBODY WOULD CARE
BlackAdder> SO WHAT DO YOU SAY TO THAT FAG
*** t0rbad sets mode: +b BlackAdder*!*@*.*
*** BlackAdder has been kicked my t0rbad ( )
t0rbad> so there i was in this hallway right
CRCError> right
heartless> Right.
r3v> right