Using tar and ssh to efficiently copy files preserving permissions
I found this so useful and have to go hunting for it fairly often that I decided to save a copy on my webpage. Source is located at the bottom.
Have you had situations where disk-space is sparse, so making full tars (although compressed) is impossible? Here is an ssh trick that could help you copy over files without using too much diskspace.
This trick will tar a directory from a computer, but the file that it would normally create, is standard out, so it is redirected back to the script on the computer you are working on. The computer you are working on extracts the information directly, so there is no location where (redundant) files are stored.
ssh user@machine-where-precious-data-is "tar czpf - /some/important/data" | tar xzpf - -C /new/root/directoryYou are now directly copying data from the “machine-where-precious-data-is” to the machine you are working on, using the benefits of tar (preserving permissions, links, etc) but not being hindered by the difficulties of tar. (making these possibly large files and so on.)
I used this trick to copy users directories from one machine to the other.An alternative command, reverse and not crossing filesystem boundries:
tar cXpf - /some/important/data | ssh user@destination-machine "tar xpf - -C /some/directory/"
SOURCE: http://meinit.nl/using-tar-and-ssh-to-efficiently-copy-files-preserving-permissions
Clouldeight InfoAve
So my grandma was having issues playing a Quicktime MOV file emailed to her from my little brother’s iPhone with the Quicktime Player. Rather than try and figure out why Quicktime won’t play a file it should know very well how to handle I suggested she download and use VLC instead. That solved her problem. Now the other day I get an email from her with the same title as this post.
It would seem she is a subscriber to Cloudeight InfoAve and she emailed in asking if they had heard of VLC. Apparently they hadn’t because they put her question in their weekly issue.
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Survival Mode
Valve finally added a survival mode to Left 4 Dead. Insanely hard if you don’t have a good team. That meaning coordinated more than anything. Then with a good team it is just hard if you don’t know the level well. Survival mode is closer to what I expected the entire game to be like. Endless horde bum rushing you from start to finish.
I expected the game to be an endless horde rushing you with specials mixed in from time to time. Having to hole up in a location and fight until the horde subsided for a bit allowing you to run to a new location. Or using the tank as a way to scare the horde and hope you can run from the tank long enough to reach some form of safety. OR even just play it the good old rambo style and fight your way through the horde out in the open in hopes of a big pay off.
Survival mode is really just the normal panic and finale events that are found through out the game anyways. Plus a few new ones. Only the worse case scenario where what ever you just did to try and progress back-fired. You are now trapped with an endless horde of zombies bearing down on you. Now you have to try and take as many as possible with you. How long can YOU survive?
New Server
Yeah. Moving all my stuff to a VPS server. Using a company I have used in the past, RoseHosting.com. They have nice, stable, linux VPS solutions. You can get a damn good deal too if you manage to catch them during one of their rare specials. As an added bonus that special is what you get permanently. It isn’t a temporary special that last so many months then you go back to the regular pricing or whatever. As you can tell I managed to catch one of these specials.
I’m also organizing all my stuff the “correct” way. Rather than the jumbled mess that I’ve meant to fix up for a long time. So links will be breaking and working, then breaking again. :/
All the links on the blog here however should all be set and ready to go. No worries there, already took care of the blog. It is the other crap that scares me….
nVidia card ranking
Just because I’m always forgetting and looking it up over and over again. GTX, GTS, GT, GS, and G.
Going from left to right is the easy way to determine how good a card is compared to other cards in the same model number.
In other words a GTX 280 is suppose to be better (and pricier) than a GTS 280. This may not always be the case though but a good rule of thumb.
Best day as a spy.
Granted this is a 24/7 dustbowl server and I was on it for 4 hours….
I played medic and engineer a round each but all other rounds were as a spy. I also only disguised as a Medic using the medi-gun. My nemesis there was also the only guy to pick up on that. He counts for about 1/2 of my deaths. Being plagued by connection issues prevented him from getting his score up. He should have been around at least 200 for as well as he was playing. I added him to my friends list before I left the server to take a break.
I must say it is good to be the king. 
My normal server and I’ll be lucky to get in the top 6. Only time I can is on a “stacked” team where I’m a medic. My regular server I’m an average Joe, if that. This server I make the the stacked team…..the only reason I went there was to practice the spy changes with the scout update.
My primary class is engineer but the Sentry Guns got their response speed nerfed a long time ago and now the average player can’t be harmed by a Sentry Gun unless they don’t know where it is. I’ve seen pyros out strafe a level 3 if they are within a flaming distance when it notices them.
My secondary class is medic. Although it is quickly becoming my primary with the sentry gun issues. I tend to piss some people off as a medic. I get an uber then everyone that I heal while it is charged think I’m giving it to them. When in reality I’m just healing them back up. They don’t realize that having an uber doesn’t mean use it NOW NOW NOW. There is some strategy involved to it. I communicate and let the person know that I’m gonna uber them. My brother is really bad about taking off when I heal him then getting pissed when I don’t actually uber him.
Spy is just a class I picked up out of boredom one day and discovered I had some talent with it on random days. Now I do pretty decent all the time. Some teams spy check and communicate to well and I can’t even get close to getting things done before getting burnt to death.
Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware
Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware is the best free app I can find for removing spyware, and malware. Even some viruses and trojans are detected and removed too! It detects every thing like Spybot does but with Ad-Aware’s speed.
Get it, use it, love it.
Been awhile.
I haven’t made a entry here is quite some time. This just isn’t really my thing, I guess. This place will probably always be mostly neglected. Hopefully I come up with some kind of use for this place. :/
Windows 7 First Impressions.
Installation wasn’t quite as easy as I’d hope. Had the exact same issues in Vista. Detects my Hard drives just fine but refuses to install to ANY of them claiming “Windows might not be able to boot from this device make sure it is enabled in the BIOS.” In reality they will and do boot just fine. I have to get around this by hitting back and next to make it finally decide to install to my hdd. Problem number 2 is both Vista and Windows 7 mis-detect the supported refresh rates of my monitor. The max vertical refresh rate is 75hz not 78hz. Forcing me to boot into safe mode and edit the registry to make 78hz disappear as doing it any other way will still lead to a blank screen on a reboot. What ever happened to using the safe value of 60hz and letting the user decide what they really want to use for the refresh rate? So until I can find a monitor the Windows 7 doesn’t mis-detect I’m stuck doing anything with it. Vista at least didn’t suffer this problem until installing the graphics drivers. Windows 7 does it right on first boot from the hdd.
Windows 7 Beta
Seems Microsoft has removed the 2.5 million limit on windows 7. Too bad for me. I had just wasted a lot of time rushing to be in that 2.5 million. Can’t blame them they screwed that whole thing up so bad. 60% was already comsumed and I bet the REAL number was probably close to 10%. The overwhelming numbers of users wanting to beta test windows 7 was the reason they gave but I think it is a cover-up. First they released the whole thing but not on the page they said they would (at least not yet) but those that were bored (myself for example) quickly found the page the main site was gonna link to later on. I started going through the process of getting my key. It was a quick, simple process involving the use of your live-id login. I was headed to the page I can only assume (at the time) was to give me my key and got “server is too busy”. After fruitlessly pressing F5 for 5 minutes I checked lifehacker. Sure enough, someone over at wired had stumbled upon the same thing I had and it in turn got posted on lifehacker. That explained why the server just “died”. Another 5 minutes of F5 and now the server was taken offline by Microsoft having caught their mistake.
Later on in the day the official release is made. Once again wired comes through and breaks the download counter of Microsoft’s by posting a direct download link. Thereby rendering the 2.5 million download limit worthless. Then there are people like me that wanted many keys. And found ways to get many registration keys. Pressing F5 being the easiest. Yep, pressing F5 will get you a different key. Though you only get 5 unique keys per version. Still one sign up nets you 10 keys in total?
Microsoft was probably forced to remove the limit not so much because of a huge number of beta testers but because if they didn’t there would likely be less than 250,000 beta testers not the 2.5 million they planned for.
