I have a plan now to move my email to other email softwares and I am just about finished step 1: copying the email from the eMac2 to a portable drive.

I have just about finished copying all the email I have stored that is all the email on the eMac2 to a portable USB drive. This drive can be accessed by Macs, Windows and Linux computers unlike the Mac backup drives which are only accessible on Macs. This has to do with the way the hard drives are formatted. So now it should be possible to import this mail to Evolution on the Netbook. Or at least move in this direction.

Backing up strategy and present progress.

I need a better back up strategy. I have not yet sent disks off site and should just take action on this and mail the boxes I have to family. I also need to start to fully back up the eMac 2 as it is almost 4 years old now. It is starting to fall apart software wise and as well the Combo drive is of unknown functionality. On the eMac are certain older computer files but these have been backed up to USB drives and also to DVD. I need to search out in my apartment all the DVD's and make sure are they are all labeled. This is the next step. Then I will put these in the boxes and mail them. I will set a date of September 3rd to have this all done.

At the moment I am backing up my Macbook email. I am also not done backing up the Documents folder on the Macbook from August 2, 2009.

I whipped the Ubuntu Hardy 8.04 LTS the was the original OS on the Dell Mini 9 and just completed a fresh install of Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook remix!

After downloading Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook remix from Ubuntu I read the instructions for installing it. Running off the command line I was able to check the MD5SUM code for the download and it was good. I followed the instructions carefully on the Ubuntu install page and used a third party web site to install usb-imagewriter and wrote the downloaded USB img to a 1 GB USB disk ( I did of course back up the previous data on the USB disk and then reformatted it to MS-DOS using Disk Utility on my Macbook).

The weird frustrating fun began. I check the help manual for Ubuntu installation and found out that what could be done is an incremental upgrade from Hardy 8.04 to another higher version than another higher version and so forth until I got to the current version. But the Dell Netbook software update was so locked down this was not possible. I wasted about an hour trying to change the software repositories and nothing worked. The Dell software update had been failing to update with security patches for about one month now. So instead after becoming frustrated I went with the original plan and did a fresh install of the latest Ubuntu 9.04 and that is installed now with my Freenet email set. I have not had NCF email for years. I have simply been forwarding mail to my sympatico account. So I am have reclaimed my NCF email account. The software update on the Dell Mini 9 is just doing its first get caught up update now on the coffee table beside this Macbook, I am writing this on. The net install also automatically choose to use Dell drivers, so I may be no worse for wear and even better with a fresh install and working software update now. Ubuntu 9.04 is current as of April 2009.

I discover www.linux-netbook.com and decided to register www.linux-netbook.org and www.linux-netbook.net. I hope to create two basic index pages today for these sites.

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My Macbook was updated to Mac OSX 10.5.8.

I updated the MacBook to OSX 10.5.8. Rather Apple did that over the Internet.

Learning SAS Output Delivery System (ODS).

SAS stands for Scientific Analysis System or Statistics Analysis Software or Statistical Analysis System. I have learned SAS at Carleton university as part of my B.Math in statistics studies and then have further used it as a teaching assistant in statistics. In that work I helped teach SAS to undergraduates in statistics courses. I now use it daily at my workplace in the government.

I have been reading the book: Haworth, Lauren. Output Delivery System: The Basics (Cary, NC: SAS Institute, 2001). So I am studying the new Output Delivery System in SAS. I have read chapter 1 at work and am today reading chapters 2 and 3. I have completed the reading of chapter 2 so far today. Chapters 1 and 2 are merely introductions to what ODS is and what it can do. Although chapter 2 covers how ODS works with SAS procedures (PROC) and the output objects from procedures, and has some syntax for using ODS. Chapter 3 is about using ODS to output HTML files.

I am reading about Emacs and learning to use Emacs on my Dell Inspiron and my Macbook.

I have been reading the book SAMS Teach Yourself Emacs in 24 Hours. I have read chapter 1 and chapter 3. I did not read chapter 2 as that was about installing Emacs on Windows NT. The book was written by Jesper Pedersen, et al. I have started to use the Diary in the Calendar in Emacs. I hope to become effective at email, code writing, LaTeX and basic word processing in Emacs. I have stated chapter 4 today.

I have started another end of month back up process.

I am backing up to the network drive again today. I should start to examine and label all the DVD's I have used to back my eMac and my Macbook. I really need to make some progress on clearing off the two LaCie 250 GB USB drives to DVD. These would be good drives to have to store music when recording with the Remembrance computer which is now loosely placed in the music rack.

The backups continue, the e-mail back up is still slow and I got started on transferring the second USB drive to the new 1 TB network drive.

I did another 12 hours or so of backups last night. I continued to back up e-mail from both the eMac and Macbook. I started in on the second 250 GB LaCie USB hard drive. I did manage to copy off a copy of Vista I had backed up there. I also backed up a copy of Win2K. Since these are single iso files these operating system files, they transfer quickly. And more importantly in personal files I got my back up of my first eMac onto the network drive. I used the old eMac from 2003 April to early 2006. I also started to transfer my older computer back ups going back to my Performa 580 CD which lasted from August 30, 1995 to early 1999. 1999 was the year I really started my statistics training and also I started to buy windows computers as well as Macs.

I found on an Iomega 20 GB USB hard drive my early 2006 Macbook backup folders and copied them to the Macbook for burning to DVD. This will take 12 DVD's for two folders at 6 copies each. Everything is now off this 20 GB Iomega USB drive so I will whip it clean and use it as a portable drive or give it away or sell it. I have someone now in mind to give this 20 GB Iomega USB hard drive to support his safe computing and to help me clean up a bit around here.

Only mail folders remain to be backed up on the Macbook and eMac

The document folders on the eMac and Macbook are now backed up for this month. Also both desktop folders are backed up. So all that remains is to complete the mail folders back up. This takes longer as there are so many files as each e-mail is one file. Remembrance is backed up and that leaves only the Dell Studio and Dell Mini 9 to back up.

The documents folder is now backed up.

The eMac documents folder is now backed up. All that remains to back up now is the email folder. I have started this folder backup. I also now need to finish backing up the Macbook which I did start the work on.

I am not sure what I am doing with my music rack...Music? Server?

I have been putting more stuff in my music rack. I am not too pleased with the server I have. But I have not really put a lot of time into it yet. I did also buy a D-Link 16 port switch and did put that in the top 1U of my 10 U music gear rack.

eMac backups and the old e-mail policy.

I have backed up the eMac's Desktop folder now. I am just verifying with the Get Info function that the two Desktops, the real one and the back up copy are about the same size.

Then I will continue the copying of files and folders from the Documents folder on the eMac to the back up copy on the network drive. Then I will back up e-mail. I will not bother to back up videos, photos, music or applications this time, as these do not change much. These especially do not change much on the eMac.

Back in early 2005 I had only an eMac and a Thinkpad. My philosophy was to keep all e-mail on the eMac when I got a Macbook to replace the Thinkpad that had broken that year. In the last six months I have lifted this policy a bit and generally read my e-mail on the Macbook. I did not want to do this for security reasons; given that I might loose a computer like a laptop outside the house I thought it better not to store e-mail on it. But I leave the e-mail on the server with the Macbook so it is still all downloaded eventually and stored on the eMac. But the eMac is getting old now. Also I am having trouble these days backing up the e-mail folders on the eMac to external drives and even more trouble backing up to DVD. When I did my e-mail on the Thinkpad before I started using only the eMac for e-mail, I could back up the e-mail to DVD no problem from the Thinkpad. There was simply less e-mail to backup back then.

I am beginning my mid month backups to a network drive.

I have been starting my backups to a network drive for the mid month. So far, I am working with Remembrance and the eMac.

I am also transferring my network music library to the new 1 TB drive.

I still have not fully transferred the first of the USB external drives to the network hard drive. It is not an easy process. There are always files that produce error messages and stop whole copy operations.

The hard drive is physically in the server and the server starts.

I found some flat headed screws from Remembrance and also my little compartment box. I was able to push the hard drive up against the IDE backplane. I am still not sure it is connected. I need to boot to the BIOS to check that. I will have to boot to the BIOS to set the boot device anyways.

I did hook the server up to a monitor and started it up. The computer tried to find bootable media.

Sure enough the computer started and showed 2 GB of RAM. This means the RAM is working too. The RAM cost about 60$ from an ebay seller.

The server hard drive trays are excellent but I need flat head screws

I got the server hard drive trays and am ready to install the 200 GB hard drive left over from the IBM ThinkCentre. To do this I need to make sure the hard drive mounting screw are flush with the tray arms so typical hard drive mounting screws are not going to work. I need flat head screws. The screws need to be flush so the tray can slide into the server. I also have my first IDE backplane which basically means when the tray slides in, the hard drive connections plug right into the connectors on the computer. These connections are on this thing called an IDE backplane. So I do not need hard drive cables.

The next step with the server is to put in a hard drive.

The next step is to put the 250 GB hard drive from my old IBM NetVista into the server. This was the NetVista's second hard drive and ran Debian Linux. The first step is to take this 250 GB hard drive out of Remembrance where is basically doing nothing as it is not recognised by the motherboard. I think the motherboard will not allow IDE and SATA drives to run at the same time or something. The hard drive trays for this server are at the post office now so I will need to pay 9 dollars customs and bring them home.

I hope to hear Richard Stallman speak tomorrow at Parliament Hill

Richard Stallman a software developer and free software advocate will be speaking on Parliament hill tomorrow and I am hoping to hear him and then join him at a restaurant near by. I have been to this restaurant a few times for social computing gatherings.

The RAM memory has been placed in the server now.

I received the server this week via UPS courier. I put the RAM memory in last night. It seems that hard drives may just plug into what is called an "IDE backplane". There seem to be only two case fans so I hope this server is not too noisy. There is one small power supply fan as well. The computer does not have a mouse port as it is a server so using one of these keyboards with a track ball set in a 1 U tray may not be the best idea. Also it does not appear to have an easy accessible PCI card slot. Thus the idea of using this as a music recording device has probably met the last straw now. So perhaps I will find another use for this as a home Intranet web server or an home Internet server. I am not sure now. I have spent about 125 dollars on the server and about 60 dollars on the RAM memory so far. So I have spent approximately 200 dollars on this computer so far.

I still need some more parts for the server.

I have the server case, the motherboard, the CPU's and the RAM. I have one 200GB hard drive I was going to use on Remembrance that I can instead use in this server. I still need some hard drive trays for about 10$ plus shipping. I think I need four of them and the shipping for four of them is 25US$ or about 30CND$. That means about 70CND$ just for the hard drive trays. I also would like a 1U keyboard tray with keyboard and these seem to be about 120CND$ on ebay including shipping. So that is a little more than 200$ more. I did find a PCI sound card that will take a stereo input from the mixing board. This cost 51$ but the Linux drivers will be another 50US$ for the license for these drivers. Then I have to think about a video monitor and mounting that on the roto rack which is a 10u wheeled hard plastic rack. It has an AP812 power mixer on top now and a bass Power amp in the bottom and a bass tube preamp.

I bought a new used server on ebay.

I bought a server case and motherboard for 19.98 US$ on ebay. The case is a rackable systems case similar to Rackable Systems 2U half depth C2004-BN but older. The motherboard is an Intel. Here are the specs:

Intel SE7501WV2 Dual Xeon Motherboard

Intel SE7501WV2 Dual Xeon, EATX, 12GB ECC DDR-SDRAM, 400/533MHz FSB
(MPN: SE7501WV2SCSI)

It also has Dual (2) Xeon 2.66Ghz Processors.

The total cost with shipping was 102CND$.