facti.net

Upgrading drupal between major releases can be a bit of a problem as I found out when upgrading from v5.5 to v6.  However, upgrading point releases can be relatively easy.  Note that to keep the URL constant and place drupal in its own file directory I use a symbolic link.  Depending on your web server you might need to set your configuration to handle that.

The strategy I use is to:

Installing Ubuntu 8.04.1 under 'normal' circumstances is a breeze and results in a very nice desktop system.  When deviating from the simple path there are a few extra steps that are worth jotting down:

I've installed and have been trying to use F9 on one of my machines for a while now, and if you are thinking of trying it I would suggest that you do not.   It is the worst release in a very long time, maybe of all time for Fedora.  I have used Fedora since it started, and there is something fundamentally worse about this release than all the others. 

Just some of the issues: removal of some important configuration options during install, quite unstable wi-fi drivers, terrible GDM, and the removal of KDE 3 for what can only be described as the currently dreadful KDE 4 implementation.  Stick to F8 until some of the really significant fixes have been implemented, or maybe skip F9 altogether and wait for F10.  F8 was quite a good release.

KDE4 in particular is disappointing. KDE used to be (pre 4) quite a fast and pragmatic desktop that conformed well to the way one worked.  Very configurable and stable and one could configure it just right so one was free to 'just get the job done'. 

the xml service provided by weather.com has changed slightly. They now choke if some fields such as the id and key are empty in the request URL, so I've nerfed them for now. I will put in a proper fix later, but this will work for now... you can get the module here.

Please note this module is for Drupal 5.x, I have not tested it with Drupal 6. jonfrancisskydiver has created a version for Drupal 6 with some nice additional features available here: http://drupal.org/project/weatherfacti so please use that if you are using Drupal 6.

Backing up is one of the most important things to be done with a computer. Failure will happen, it is only a question of when, and information loss can be quite painful. Unfortunately the amount of information available now makes it more difficult to effectively manage backups and archives.

Even though my main backup medium of choice (external hard drives) is getting cheaper and bigger about as fast as my information growth, the pipe the information must flow through (USB or FireWire, or DVD for archives) is not keeping up. This makes it slower and more laborious to keep backups up-to-date as more information is added.

If you have a good strategy leave me a comment and let me know what it is, I would love to hear about it. My current strategy is to have a current view and a historical view of important data. I don't backup the OS and installed applications since I always ensure I can rebuild the OS and applications from my install media.