I would really like to have some backups of my home network.
I am currently concerned with this set of machines:
legion: My personal desktop. Running Ubuntu Breezy / Windows XP Pro. 150G
linux partition, 150G windows.
kazekage: My old desktop, an ad-hoc "media center" PC that's hooked up to
the TV; also serves as experimental / shared server / guest computer. 100G
linux partition. Hoary right now, probably upgraded to Breezy soon. 60G XP
partition that will hardly ever be used.
atuin: One of
these things. Technically it runs some kind of linux, but it's a
hermetically sealed box as far as I'm concerned. It's a 1T disk over SMB
(samba, but no CIFS/UNIX extensions).
zelda: Print server. MacOS X (Jaguar). Runs VNC; headless. 40G HFS+
drive.
trogdor: laptop. dual boot Ubuntu Breezy / XP home. 60G linux partition, 20G
windows.
There are a few other machines which may or may not be interesting to back
up comprising about 200G more, all in linux.
The medium I will be backing up to is DVD-Rs, which I can get at $0.08/G -
that would make the full price of one backup (with all disks full)
$153.19.
I am looking for a backup system that will allow me to make this sort of
backup with easy, selective restoration. Ideal would be a system where each
individual DVD would contain an ISO filesystem with the actual files being
backed up stored directly there, and some kind of directory-tree based index
where I could make labels that would allow me to find a file. If anything in
my TB drive blows, I am not going to want to buy a new one with the same
capacity and then spend 6 days swapping DVDs trying to find the one file I
need.
I don't mind if it's proprietary software, as long as it's reasonably
priced, but I despair of finding anything that isn't open-source, since this
amount of data sounds like an "enterprise" problem, and I am definitely not
going to pay "enterprise" prices to back up my MP3s.
Not only is it a release announcement, it is quite possibly the
most detailed and complete description of Q2Q availble anywhere
publicly.
Lots of people ask me, probably because I have internet chat programs open a
lot but also possibly because it's my god damned job to know,
"What's going on with Divmod?"
Specifically, an area of concern lately has been that no visible improvements have been made to our flagship product in quite some time.
As anybody who reads JP's blog or Amir's ought to know, we have been hard at work.
We have launched a new application. We have started a few new projects. It may seem as though we've randomly gone off in a new direction.
We don't have much of a budget for customer relations, so we have been late in explaining what's going on, but rest assured that there is a plan at work here, and that your email is safe. We are trying to find incremental ways to become profitable without requiring open signup to Quotient (the Divmod intelligent email system), because it is too hard to achieve that goal while we are still working on short schedules and trying to figure out how the company is going to keep running from month to month. With no revenue stream, we don't have the collective attention span required to finish such an ambitious project, despite the massive effort invested so far.
However, we do have plans for applications in the following months which are effectively small, vertical slices of the full Quotient experience, and we will be turning them on one at a time, offering free or low-cost sign-up to each individually, and finally (when some of these have started paying for themselves) we will roll them up into a larger service, and migrate all our existing users' data.
Truly adventurous users may want to move over sooner than that, the second we have anything email-related at all. Talk to me, and I'll be sure to let you know when that moment is.
We have just rewritten most of our infrastructure outside of Twisted. Although it is going to take time, and some intermediary steps to get our whole email application running on top of the new stuff, it is definitely going to be worth the wait. The application is going to get better by an order of magnitude. (Those of you who have layperson family members who subscribe - please translate that appropriately.)
Personally, I'm immensely relieved by this change of pace. We have brought on a new employee, Moe Aboulkheir, who is absolutely brilliant. On a team with too many infrastructure gurus, he (along with Amir) has been the persistent voice of the application, getting us from an idea to something resembling a finished product faster than ever before in our history. It looks like we're going to be replicating that success a few times in the near future and I can't wait.
Divmod is OK. It's just a flesh wound, really. We've had worse. Thanks to all you out there reading this for sticking with us.
Specifically, an area of concern lately has been that no visible improvements have been made to our flagship product in quite some time.
As anybody who reads JP's blog or Amir's ought to know, we have been hard at work.
We have launched a new application. We have started a few new projects. It may seem as though we've randomly gone off in a new direction.
We don't have much of a budget for customer relations, so we have been late in explaining what's going on, but rest assured that there is a plan at work here, and that your email is safe. We are trying to find incremental ways to become profitable without requiring open signup to Quotient (the Divmod intelligent email system), because it is too hard to achieve that goal while we are still working on short schedules and trying to figure out how the company is going to keep running from month to month. With no revenue stream, we don't have the collective attention span required to finish such an ambitious project, despite the massive effort invested so far.
However, we do have plans for applications in the following months which are effectively small, vertical slices of the full Quotient experience, and we will be turning them on one at a time, offering free or low-cost sign-up to each individually, and finally (when some of these have started paying for themselves) we will roll them up into a larger service, and migrate all our existing users' data.
Truly adventurous users may want to move over sooner than that, the second we have anything email-related at all. Talk to me, and I'll be sure to let you know when that moment is.
We have just rewritten most of our infrastructure outside of Twisted. Although it is going to take time, and some intermediary steps to get our whole email application running on top of the new stuff, it is definitely going to be worth the wait. The application is going to get better by an order of magnitude. (Those of you who have layperson family members who subscribe - please translate that appropriately.)
Personally, I'm immensely relieved by this change of pace. We have brought on a new employee, Moe Aboulkheir, who is absolutely brilliant. On a team with too many infrastructure gurus, he (along with Amir) has been the persistent voice of the application, getting us from an idea to something resembling a finished product faster than ever before in our history. It looks like we're going to be replicating that success a few times in the near future and I can't wait.
Divmod is OK. It's just a flesh wound, really. We've had worse. Thanks to all you out there reading this for sticking with us.
I have been avoiding stealing Amir's thunder, so he can be the one to talk
about it, and now he has: Read about Divmod's
first new app in our great overhaul.
Divmod has an idea for an internal accounting system that I think is really
exciting.
(That's right. I think our planned accounting system is cool. Perhaps I've had a bit too much kool-aid this year...)
For a while we wrestled with the idea of "Divmod Dollars" - how are we going to bill for our services out of a fixed pre-paid pool? Each individual "click" in the system should generally be free, charging you only internally,and only billing you if you overflow some large pre-paid limit. This seems to be the key to a successful micropayments system - paying for a reasonable amount of usage up-front so that each transaction doesn't have to worry you. Phone companies do this by charging for "minutes" (or, less popularly, for bits), ISPs for "bits", and airlines do it to a lesser extent by using their rewards program with "miles". For the wide variety of services we had planned there was no physically analagous unit of stuff.
So instead, we're going to charge in an internal unit, like a subway token. We call it the "divmid". The core part of the plan is that all services that you buy from Divmod will have to be purchased in divmids rather than in dollars. Convenient interfaces will be provided in various places to convert from sources of funds such as a credit card, PayPal, or e-gold.
As soon as we can get our accounting server up and running, we are going to start selling Divmids. Divmids will be available to our existing subscribers at a reduced rate, and to the general public at an initial cost of $0.60USD or so.
For now.
We've painfully discovered that e-mail is a bad first service to launch, especially on brand-new infrastructure. We've found, time and time again, that our platform needs tweaking, and while we haven't had problems losing users' data or having serious interruptions in service, the amount of care we have had to put towards the objective of stability and reliability has been prohibitive. For example, as a service like flickr improves, it "gets a massage" several times a month, and nobody minds because of their cute maintenance page. If those same users' email had disappeared (beta disclaimer or no), they probably wouldn't have been so charitable.
So instead, we are going to be publicly launching a set of simpler, more self-contained services, and gradually working up to our grand vision of an automated communications platform. Our first service should be available as soon as next week - I'll let Amir describe that one in a separate post.
As the value and diversity of services you can purchase with one divmid goes up, we will raise the price commensurately. In other words, our customers are effectively our venture capitalists. If you buy divmids, and the services become worth something, you can sell them. It's not a share in the company - and it is therefore not priced out of the reach of mere mortals - but it is something that ultimately represents our success. On the other hand, there is the risk that Divmids will suddenly become valueless, or decrease in value if we can't provide certain services any longer.
We do not plan on providing a way to directly convert Divmids back to dollars directly. Continuing with the subway token metaphor; when you buy a subway token and the transit authority raises its rates, you can't just take your tokens back and turn them into cash. Instead, we plan to set up an exchange where people can sell Divmids to each other rather than buying direct from us.
(That's right. I think our planned accounting system is cool. Perhaps I've had a bit too much kool-aid this year...)
For a while we wrestled with the idea of "Divmod Dollars" - how are we going to bill for our services out of a fixed pre-paid pool? Each individual "click" in the system should generally be free, charging you only internally,and only billing you if you overflow some large pre-paid limit. This seems to be the key to a successful micropayments system - paying for a reasonable amount of usage up-front so that each transaction doesn't have to worry you. Phone companies do this by charging for "minutes" (or, less popularly, for bits), ISPs for "bits", and airlines do it to a lesser extent by using their rewards program with "miles". For the wide variety of services we had planned there was no physically analagous unit of stuff.
So instead, we're going to charge in an internal unit, like a subway token. We call it the "divmid". The core part of the plan is that all services that you buy from Divmod will have to be purchased in divmids rather than in dollars. Convenient interfaces will be provided in various places to convert from sources of funds such as a credit card, PayPal, or e-gold.
As soon as we can get our accounting server up and running, we are going to start selling Divmids. Divmids will be available to our existing subscribers at a reduced rate, and to the general public at an initial cost of $0.60USD or so.
For now.
We've painfully discovered that e-mail is a bad first service to launch, especially on brand-new infrastructure. We've found, time and time again, that our platform needs tweaking, and while we haven't had problems losing users' data or having serious interruptions in service, the amount of care we have had to put towards the objective of stability and reliability has been prohibitive. For example, as a service like flickr improves, it "gets a massage" several times a month, and nobody minds because of their cute maintenance page. If those same users' email had disappeared (beta disclaimer or no), they probably wouldn't have been so charitable.
So instead, we are going to be publicly launching a set of simpler, more self-contained services, and gradually working up to our grand vision of an automated communications platform. Our first service should be available as soon as next week - I'll let Amir describe that one in a separate post.
As the value and diversity of services you can purchase with one divmid goes up, we will raise the price commensurately. In other words, our customers are effectively our venture capitalists. If you buy divmids, and the services become worth something, you can sell them. It's not a share in the company - and it is therefore not priced out of the reach of mere mortals - but it is something that ultimately represents our success. On the other hand, there is the risk that Divmids will suddenly become valueless, or decrease in value if we can't provide certain services any longer.
We do not plan on providing a way to directly convert Divmids back to dollars directly. Continuing with the subway token metaphor; when you buy a subway token and the transit authority raises its rates, you can't just take your tokens back and turn them into cash. Instead, we plan to set up an exchange where people can sell Divmids to each other rather than buying direct from us.