I constantly push to implement a solid backup plan for clients. Some opt to get their data off-site, which is always a smart thing to do. You can’t ever have too much backup. Only thing is–there’s no easy way to get a 30 gig Exchange database off-site regularly over a WAN connection… unless you use an external disk. For this, I carry my trusty Seagate, but what if it fails? What if it were lost or stolen? Huge amounts of private information could be exposed. NOT good. We need security.

I copy these super sensitive files to an encrypted volume on my external disk. I created this volume with TrueCrypt, a free encryption utility that runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

There are a few ways to go about encrypting a removable volume. (Before we begin, make sure you’ve downloaded and setup TrueCrypt.)

Part 1: Create an encrypted container on a flash drive

This works pretty good on flash drives, though a few caveats exist. First of all, Windows XP & Vista don’t support multiple partitions on removable drives. Because of this, we must create a container file that resides on one partition.

Note: Some flash drive manufacturers (such as Lexar) have created utilites that allow you to set the removable media bit, effectively fooling windows into thinking the flash drive is a real hard drive. Unless you know of a way to do this on your flash drive, a container file is the way to go.

Part 2: Create an encrypted volume on an external disk

Notice how we’ve previously created one large encrypted partition, and one smaller unencrypted partition. This can be done within the Disk Management subset of Computer Management (when right-clicking My Computer > Manage). The traveler files will live on this smaller partition.

Any type of TrueCrypt volume will secure your data with very strong encryption (using a password of at least 20 characters). Attempting to break this would bring the best cryptographers and supercomputers to certain resignation. This is real government-grade security (and certainly good enough for 007).

Ever have nine Firefox windows open, with 5+ tabs in each?  This could easily chew up 250 megs of memory or more, even if you suddenly reduce to one window with no tabs. On a system with less than 1 gig of memory, these are valuable system resources we’re talking about here.

There is a setting that will make Firefox swap its memory when minimized, which, if you’re low on memory to begin with, could mean a tremendous performance boost.

In Firefox’s location bar, type: about:config and agree to clear the warning message.

Right-click anywhere and create a new boolean value called:

Then select true for the value. Click Ok and restart Firefox.

When firing up the browser again, we should see immediate improvements in memory consumption when the browser is minimized, as the memory it ties up will be swapped to the disk instead.

I ran into a problem recently where I needed to delete all rows in a MySQL table that were older than three months. This I was able to accomplish with the following statement:

Substitute table and column, and a proper date option. The date_sub function subtracts a time period from the date specified. In this statement, NOW() grabs the current date from which INTERVAL 3 MONTHS is subtracted (along with the < operand).

When it comes to typography, Microsoft TrueType fonts are both visually appealing and aesthetically pleasing. They’re found all over the web, usually specified in stylesheets. Unfortunately for Linux users, the most common TTFs aren’t installed (by default, that is). Instead, they are replaced by generic equivalents. With these font packages installed, you will see websites as the designer intended.

The Microsoft TrueType fonts package includes:

• Andale Mono
• Arial Black
• Arial (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
• Comic Sans MS (Bold)
• Courier New (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
• Georgia (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
• Impact
• Times New Roman (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
• Trebuchet (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
• Verdana (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
• Webdings

Installing MS TrueType fonts in Ubuntu

You can install the MS core fonts by installing the msttcorefonts package. You will need to enable the “Universe” component of the repositories (done by default in Feisty & Hardy). After that, run the following from the command line:

While this gives you the core fonts, it also gives you the ability to install any other font by simply copying the .TTF to the ~/.fonts/ directory.

When installing new fonts, you’ll need to re-login to be able to see & use them. Optionally, this step can be bypassed by regenerating the fonts cache with:

Installing MS TrueType fonts in Fedora

Yep, a few extra steps in Fedora, but still a cinch. From the shell:

That should do it. Reinitialize the font cache, re-login or reboot and have another look at this site (with Georgia).

Fedora 9 was released this past Tuesday. The upgrade process has changed slightly, with the Fedora Project integrating a new tool called PreUpgrade.

To upgrade, make sure your system is fully updated with:

and reboot when the process has completed successfully (in case it installed a new kernel).

From here, we can install the new PreUpgrade with:

When that finishes, kick it off with:

As we proceed through the wizard, your screens will resemble:

Click Forward.

The new release will be chosen by default. Click Apply.

At this point, new packages are downloaded which may take some time. Grab some coffee while the downloads transfer.

Finished! Reboot and we will see a screen like this:

The remaining portion of the upgrade will be completed by Anaconda, which took approximately 5 hours on my system. Proceed by clicking Next.

“Upgrade an existing installation” is preselected, hit Next to continue.

Here you are prompted to upgrade the GRUB boot loader. This is the best thing to do. Click Next. The following series of screens are shown as the upgrade progresses:

Ah, here we are. We find ourselves at the final screen, indicating the success of the upgrade. Word. Reboot. And that should conclude the process.

In my opinion, this upgrade was 1000x better than the upgrade from F7 to F8. I ran into all kinds of issues then, but this was better.

Having gone through the steps now, what was your upgrade experience like?