Returned from Belgium – Snow annual weekend

Last Sunday we returned from Belgium. I first opted to drive the same way as we did on the way in (via Eindhoven) but we got redirected through Antwerpen, which made the travel easy and comfortable. One thing: do not eat at the AC restaurant near Breda (just before the border); it’s expensive and we didn’t like the food. The sate(chicken) wasn’t quite ready yet (not cooked very well); my Schnitzel was “ok” and Luca’s spaghetti was just from the Microwave and not entirely interesting / nice to eat.

Anyway; on friday we arrived, having eaten already so we could pickup my new Macbook (which is just in front of me at the moment updating and things like that) and head for our little house. It was a very nice little house, it’s one of the best houses that we had while being away for a weekend. We showered Luca and took some resting, this was one of the first weekends that we had ‘time off’. Saturday we had breakfast in the house, we got a very large survival pack from Snow :-) and headed over to the Quad terrain where Luca was about to drive. We found out that it was right next to our house so very short walk :)

Luca was a bit over optimistic and flew the Quad (we have some pictures, see the gallery) and we drove together as well, which was much more fun for both of us :) .. The rest of the time we went to the swimming pool and the childrensplayground. We had dinner with the Snow people later that day, (Good food, we liked it :) ), and again retired for the evening making a slow stop, great to get back to strength a bit because of these weekends :)

Sunday we again went to the playgrounds and the swimming pool ; after which we headed home. Denise unpacked and packed, she’s away with her group 8 :-) , so the house is entirely mine :-) :-) (or at least for the moment).

Now heading out to fetch Luca from school and then eat and swimming (again :D )

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Molenheide Belgium

In an hour, I will drive to Vlaardingen together with Luca to pickup Denise. We are then heading towards the Molenheide in Belgium. Why? Because Snow organised their annual spring-weekend. The kids are invited so Luca and Denise will travel along. I fear that we will hit high traffic near Eindhoven, but lets see how things resolve :-) . When we pass Eindhoven we will lookout for other Snow cars; there should be a few of them around there. Luckily after Eindhoven we are nearly there.

On sunday we will return in the midday, after that I’ll write up a little story and put in some pictures :)

 

A BSD Magazine article

At the beginning of this year I was asked by the BSD Magazine people to write an article. I asked what the idea was and I was told that I could emphasize on security, or the installation of FreeBSD and things like that. But then in a way to that everyone can understand it. Also I knew that I was going to move out of the house within limited time, so I agreed writing it if I could have some help.

Jeremy Reed, Michael Lucas and Murray Stokely helped where possible and it resulted in a very nice article. The issue should be out soon, so you are invited to order the issue of http://www.bsdmag.org and read the article I wrote. It goes about installing FreeBSD 7.1 (yeah it applies to 7.2 as well for whats it worth :) ). So stay tuned!

20090612: In addition you can download/order it from here: http://www.freebsdmall.com/cgi-bin/fm/bsdmag.05?id=HtzwqhCU&mv_pc=105.

If you read it, I am ofcourse interested in seeing what you think about it, so do not hesitate to let me know!

 

FreeBSD – clang

Ed Schouten started working on a FreeBSD – clang project. He did this by importing clang into a project repository and making sure that a ‘make buildkernel’ succeeds. (If I followed correctly). I believe this is one of the steps that he will be taking to get the LLVM compiler suitable for FreeBSD, and perhaps eventually replacing the GNU licensed gcc compiler. That (like his TTY work) would be one hell of a job! Please poke ed@FreeBSD.org if you are interested in helping!

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FreeBSD 8.0 Slush

The FreeBSD 8.0 code slush had been announced. This means that large projects are no longer allowed to do “drive by commits” to the head branch, but that there is an organisation behind it that checks everything and makes sure there are enough people to cover the project and make sure it’s in the best possible shape before the release. The release will take a little to get going, but the process had been started. From here on the team will have to manouver through a pipe that keeps getting smaller and smaller. If your favorite new feature is not in yet, don’t hold your breath because this might mean that it will take a little longer to get it in a first -RELEASE installation. Stay tuned!

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Backups restored

Make backups. That’s one of the lessons learned after reinstalling Nakur. I transfered back all files to the machine, and most functionality is completely restored. This could only be done because of backups that I had available with rsnapshot. rsnapshot under FreeBSD is maintained by Ralf v Dooren, a Snow collegue! and works best for this to get the backups back at home…

There is one pity though, the upload speed is capped at 1mbit. This makes restoring large backups a bit more problematic. Even if you have all data (OK I now have a full SQL backup script running everyday instead of periodically), you also depend on the speed with which it can be restored. If that speed is inadequate it makes restoring painful.

I toyed with the hetzner backup FTP server and I am using Duplicity with a given password, so that I have “local” backups available, which can be transfered at multiple megabits, a full backup took ~ 4 hours, which makes it double that amount max to restore (I like to take the times bigger then they really are). That’s better then 5 full days (5×24hours) :-) .

So, speed is also important :-)

 
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