Rogue Wolves

To test out iFolder I had to upgrade my Fedora Linux install to FC4. I contemplated FC5 but read somewhere about an issue with iFolder and FC5 so I decided against it. Best not to leap frog from FC3 to FC5 anyways...baby steps.

Rather than clean install or download the installer CD and attempt an upgrade I decided to tempt fate and see how well a live update using Yum would work. Note: first I backed up everything. I may be adventurous but I'm not crazy. This upgrade path is not recommended by the Fedora Project, however many people have had good success with it.

Key points:

• Disable third party repositories first
• Backup everything important!
• Make note of any third party software you may have installed (it may be broken after the upgrade)
• Disable SELinux and reboot
• Some config files may have changed. The upgrade will not overwrite your existing config files but will create a version with a .rpmnew extension so you can merge the changes into your existing config.
• FC3 uses PHP 4 and FC4 uses PHP 5 so you will have to update your php.ini file after the upgrade. You pretty much can just mv php.ini php.ini.bak and mv php.ini.rpmnew php.ini to get it working.

This is a quick list of steps on what to do.  For more information on what's going on etc, read through the links at the bottom.  Particularly if you have a 64 bit system, there are some additional steps that I omitted here.

Step 1: yum -y update yum
Step 2: wget http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/4/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS/fedora-release-4-2.noarch.rpm
Step 3: rpm -Uvh /path/to/fedora-release-4-2.noarch.rpm
Step 4: Disable third party repositories. I just renamed them from .repo to .bak
Step 5: yum -y upgrade mkinitrd
Step 6: yum -y update kernel
Step 7: Disable SELinux: nano /etc/sysconfig/selinux and set SELINUX=disabled
Step 8: Reboot and load FC4 Kernel
Step 9: yum remove kernel-2.6.\*FC3\* and yum remove kernel-smp\*FC3\*
Step 10: yum -y upgrade
Step 11: Go get a coffee this will take some time...
Step 12: yum groupinstall "GNOME Desktop Environment"
Step 13: Re-enable SELinux if you use it
Step 14: Reboot
Step 15: Look over system logs and see if any problems occurred at bootup.
Step 16: Re-enable third party repositories and perform yum update

I didn't come up with this whole step process. I used the following two resources to come up with a strategy:

YumUpgradeFaq

Upgrading Red Hat Linux with Yum

So far it's been a big success. My only snag was php being broken, but after updating my php.ini file it worked fine. Now I should be able to give iFolder a go and see how well it works...

I may have found a solution to my synch issue I posted previously.

iFolder looks promising. It basically meets most of my criteria. Here are some of the highlights:

• Cross-platform: runs on OSX, Windows, Linux, etc.
• Auto-syncs files to server and propagates to all client machines.
• Has a web-front end so you can access your files anywhere using a web-browser.
• Open Source!
• User/Group Security

From the iFolder website:

iFolder is a simple and secure storage solution that can increase your productivity by enabling you to back up, access and manage your personal files-from anywhere, at any time. Once you have installed iFolder, you simply save your files locally-as you have always done-and iFolder automatically updates the files on a network server and delivers them to the other machines you use.

Now it's just a matter of finding some free time to test it out and see how well it works...

Want a free book on PHP 4.0? Simply click here for a free ebook on PHP 4.0 from Apress. It's not PHP 5.0 but hey it's free and lots of it will still be relevant. I found this through the Drupal Announcements RSS feed:

Free PHP 4.0 ebook from Apress | drupal.org:

For the PHP 4.0 ebook, you should be able to simply go to http://apress.com/free/content/ProgrammersIntroductionToPHP4.pdf and view the PDF file. If that doesn't work, follow these steps:

1. Go to http://apress.com/free/index.html

2. Unclick “Subscribe to Apress newsletter” (unless you really want the newsletter).

3. Click “Download the book” without entering your email address (unless you want the newsletter).

4. On the next screen, to the right of where it says, “A Programmer's Introduction to PHP 4.0 (4.2 MB PDF file),” click on “Download now.”

5. The next screen takes you to http://apress.com/free/content/ProgrammersIntroductionToPHP4.pdf. It might take a few moments due to the PDF file being 4.2MB.

Enjoy!

I have a problem that I think is fairly common these days. I have several machines I work on day to day and several different sets of files scattered in the winds. I'll be working on one machine and realize a file I want to view is on a different machine. I try to manually tidy up my mess when I can but it's a losing battle. I end up doing what I think many others do...I end up emailing files to myself to transfer them from one machine to another (I don't own a flash drive and this is usually the fastest method). Emailing while a fairly ugly way to transfer files sometimes is the easiest way to do it. For my home machines I can copy over the network but for my office machine it's not as easy.

So.....

I have a server that I do use as a fileserver but I tend not to store all my files there because I don't always have access to it. I need to have offline access to my files.

What I'm thinking of for a solution:

I want to store all files on my home directory on my server BUT have each laptop have a working copy of that set of files. I want to be able to synchronize the filesystems so whatever machine I'm working on with have the latest set of files. Also would be nice to be able to access the file store on the server directly from any computer/platform with little setup for those times when I'm using a public terminal. Also I would like it to be secure and communications to be encrypted.

I want to be able to work on the files if I am disconnected from the network and I want files to sync back up with the server automatically when I reconnect to the network.

It's a lot to ask but this should be feasible...at least in part. I was thinking I might be able to use RSYNC for the synchronization... I was even considering CVS or Subversion but thought this might be overkill and could be cumbersome... I even thought of using tools that turn GMail into a filesystem but I would rather host the files myself and not trust someone else. I am after all talking about ALL my digital files.

Anyone have any thoughts on a good solution? Or any feedback on how they work around the problem?

I think if I figure something out this could be awesome...