Category Archives: Programming

tiBackup – Local backup for linux servers and desktops

I have updated again my backupsoftware for Linux: tiBackup software.

Some new features und changes include:

  • Changed default language to english
  • Scheduled Backups are now possible (daily, weekly, monthly)
  • Some smaller enhancements and fixes

Please also checkout the new screenshots on my project page. As now there are no new packaged versions available, you have to compile your own. In the future i will also release packaged versions for Debian/Ubuntu.

tiBackup – Local backup for linux servers and desktops

Some time ago i released a first version of my tiBackup software.

Since that i have greatly enhanced the functions of this software. Some new features are:

  • Alot of GUI cleanup/enhancement and code reorganisation
  • Added feature to send notification to eMailadress when backup is finished
  • Added feature to execute a custom script before backup starts (special tiBackup VARS can be used to make it even more dynamic)
  • All available disks can be used now for backups, not only USB attached disks
  • Backups can be started manually (executed in own thread now, so dont block the GUI)

In the future there are new features planned like:

  • Not only allow “hotplug” backups but also timed backups (every day, every week, custom time, …)
  • More notification options
  • More scripts options
  • Give me some input you want… ; )

Please note there are no precompiled binaries right now because of lot of changes made every time. So you must compile your own binaries. I will give short instructions how to do it in the project site here.

tiBackup – An intelligent desktop/standalone backup system

I was long time looking for an easy to use desktop/standalone backup system on Linux without writing weird udev scripts or so on. My requirements where just easy: Define a Backupjob, plug in your USB-backupdrive and the backup begins, when the backup is finished get some notification of the status. Also i wanted a GUI to configure this steps. There were some opensource attempts to provide this feature (okay, nothing with GUI), but nothing i was satisfied with.

So as with many projects i come to the point to say: Write your own. I worked now about 5 days on this new project, mostly in my spare freetime. I call it now in alpha status, some features are still missing but the most are working. I had already some backups running with success on my systems. But it still need a lot of testing, also on different systems.

The concept is as follows.

I wanted to split the project in 3 parts:

  1. tiBackupLib – Core library providing functions to GUI and Daemon
  2. tiBackup – Backup daemon in background listening to udev/backup events
  3. tiBackupUI – GUI tool for configuring the program (optional)

I wanted to design the project that there is no GUI required, means you can still configure the program on a console only (no X) system. For this i decided to save the configuration files in a .ini file format for easy editing on console with text editors.

Also the daemon itself requires no GUI because its a seperate binary. The GUI is only needed for nice and easy configuration and maintanance, like configuring the program or viewing log reports. An approach which is rarely used in the opensource world i think but is important to end users who are used to Windows administration.

The project itself is hosted on github, you can access it on https://github.com/theinvisible/

For more details and tryout please visit my project page: tiBackup

lilac-reloaded 2.0.8 released (PHP)

An new update has been released with mostly bugfixes.

Changelog:

lilac-reloaded 2.0.8:
– on installation timezone selection for australia and africa is enabled
– added new cgi-field nagios_check_command
– cannot delete escalation in hostgroups -> fixed
– exporter fails with no error when job name is blank -> fixed

See the project site for downloads:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/lilac–reloaded/

Linux ACLs and moving files

One of my workmates was just about to play around with Linux ACLs on desktops with enduser-usability. He tried to setup network shares via NFS and standard Linux ACLs to the LDAP users.

He told me then he has a weird problem with moving files into this share and keeping the right permissions. He expected that when moving a file into this network share the file get the ACL permission of the parent directory (default ACL set on parent directory). This was true when you copy a file, but when moving a file in this share it just keeps the old permissions.

This was a big problem for us for the enduser usability. You cannot expect that endusers dont have to moving files but instead copy them and then delete on the old location. We also couldnt find any information or workaround to fix this problem.

So my idea was to write a small program in python that observes this special directories and sets the ACLs as expected. As first testings gives feedback this seems to work very well. It uses standard Python 2.7 and the inotify kernel extension. You also have to setup the “sudoers” file if you dont want it to run as root.

If you are interested or have the same problem you are welcome to test this program on your own. I have setup a bitbucket project to host this program.

Update: I have also setup a small project page now with some usage information: Linux ACL-Observer

https://bitbucket.org/renehadler/acl-observer 

lilac-reloaded 2.0.7 released (PHP)

An new updated has been released again with lot of bugfixes and features.

Changelog:

lilac-reloaded 2.0.7:
– added support for new Nagios 4 fields, marked deprecated options
– added new CGI fields
– added additional checks to avoid PHP flooding the logs
– marked fields that are deprecated in Nagios 4
– reenabled “restart nagios” function on export, added notice how to implement
– better error handling on database errors
– many bug fixes, see git log

See the project site for downloads:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/lilac–reloaded/

lilac-reloaded 2.0.6 released (PHP)

An new updated has been released again with lot of bugfixes and features.

Changelog:

lilac-reloaded 2.0.6:
– added support for custom object variables for hosts, services and contacts (and templates)
– fixed typo in fruity importer for NagiosHostContactGroup (should be NagiosHostContactgroup)
– improved autodiscovery feature, bugfixes and display enhancements

See the project site for downloads:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/lilac–reloaded/