Month: March 2010

rsync and the Hard Link Limitation

I’ve been setting up a new backup regime on a hosted server that I’m helping to maintain.

One of the key issues right now is that it is there isn’t a solid provided backup regime, so I’ve spent the day playing around with different Linux backup solutions trying to get to the bottom of a simple, yet robust way of backing up.

I like rsync, but the problem is that you can’t use it’s hard linking feature over secure shell. As such, incremental backups are a pain.

I was about to give up on it, and work out a convoluted tar process when it occurred to me that the hard links might still be possible.

And to that end, I wrote this script: Continue reading rsync and the Hard Link Limitation

Life and Blogging is Hard

Plus.net have moved to the new CGI platform after some sort of disaster. As this was coming for almost a year, I’m shocked that the platform still seems in such a shoddy state.

This has meant that the site has been misbehaving for a few weeks. Most notably causing random Apache errors.

I think that it’s a wake up call to me that I need to get this blog living somewhere else. Letting it expand and breathe as it needs to.

Some of the way to that is getting a new hosting plan sorted out. I wanted to do this in an el-cheapo style by using SQLite instead of mySQL to power WordPress, but it seems like the database abstraction that it uses might as well be non-existant. mySQL or bust I’m afraid.

In a time when PHP provides a unified access library, and many frameworks have a respectable set of DB abstraction libraries – it’s frustrating to see the WordPress team get suckered into making new features the top of the development priority list, while failing to solidify or revisit programming fundamentals.

And what’s the point of having plugins at all if they don’t get approved in any way? After my trial with SQLite, I’m genuinely worried about any WP plugins now.

Moving soon folks!