Asus Eee PC

I've been thinking about getting an Asus Eee PC. It runs Linux and has a solid state hard disk. I'd really like to get the 8G model, but at $499, it starts to get pricy. If it had a higher resolution display, I'd buy it immediately, but lately, I've been thinking more about getting the cheap $299 2G model. The first thing I'd do is backup the Xandros disk image with PBA and then start experimenting with other distros.

Finally, a Grandma's LAMP 1.0.1 Download Link

Happy New Year and sorry for the delay. Grandma's LAMP 1.0.1 has FINALLY been uploaded to:

http://flyupload.flyupload.com/?fid=3477667

The link should be up for 60 days. I gave it to one person back in September and, he didn't complain too much about it. Please let me know if this version of Grandma's LAMP works for you.

Also, can someone seed a torrent somewhere and let me know the torrent link?

I'm too busy these days with work, school, and family, but I hope to get some time to work on PBA again also. Thanks for your help and patience.

New Release: Grandma's LAMP 1.0.1

I have a new release of Grandma's LAMP available. Version 1.0.1 uses a vmdk disk that's split into 2GB chunks, and the packages are upgraded.

I'm looking for someone who can help out by hosting direct downloads for Grandma's LAMP? Please let me know if you can help. I'll work on getting a torrent download started also. Thanks.

Someone broke Grandma's Lamp

It seems the new version of VMware player checks to see whether or not the vmdk disk is spanned into 2GB chunks. Because Grandma's Lamp uses a 10GB vmdk disk in a single file, it won't run. I'm working on a new version that will correct this. For those that don't want to wait, you can always try using Personal Backup Appliance to backup and restore Grandma's LAMP to a new vmdk disk that is spanned into 2GB chunks.

Amahi

This might interest some of you.

http://www.amahi.org

A PXE-enabled version of Personal Backup Appliance is integrated in the Amahi home server product.

I've been running an Amahi home server on real hardware in my home for a few months, and it's what I use exclusively for backups.

Here are some links to get started. The Amahi Project is actively seeking volunteers to deploy the Amahi into their home.

http://wiki.amahi.org/index.php/Fedora-7

PXE, NFS, blah blah

I'm working on a new version of PBA that is more centered around the PXE boot client. The PXE boot client will be the default client, and NFS will be default protocol for transfer. I'm not sure if this is the best thing to do, but from a programming point of view, this greatly simplifies the code.

Personal Backup Appliance 1.1.1-RC1

Download it here:

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/pba-vm/Personal-Backup-Appliance-1.1.1-vm-RC1.zip

It's a release candidate. I'd like people to test it before I make it a real release. There's a PXE server, and multicast is supported. Both are accessed through pba-server-console. By default the PXE server is not started.

The kernel served by the PXE server isn't the same as that served by the client CD. It doesn't support SCSI storage and you may have trouble with it on legacy-free systems. Other than that it works. I tested it using VMware machines with IDE storage.

If you have a lab of machines, as many as you can round up, then please help test the multicast feature with different filesystems (NTFS, ext3, LVM). I am uncertain of its robustness.

Good news...I have multicast working

Good news...I have multicast working now on my test version of PBA.

A few notes:

• I need to do lots of testing, and I could use some help. If you have a population of machines in a lab environment, say around ten or so, that you can dedicate to helping me test pxe and multicast, send me an email at rxhui at users dot sourceforge dot net. Please also let me know what operating systems/filesystems you can help test.
  
• For the time being, I'm dropping multicast support of zsplit/unzsplit archives. The only reason you may have zsplit/unzsplit archives is if you created the backup with version 1.0.2. Versions after 1.0.2 use dd for raw backup. I don't think this should be a problem for most people.
• Does anyone want to help with documentation? Not sure exactly what yet, but if someone is interested and motivated, I'm sure I can identify something relevant in PBA that needs better documentation.