Big things in small pieces

Here is the thing: I rented a dedicated server at Hetzner.

I plan to cancel Dropbox (will stay only with the free version), my VPS at DigitalOcean and a backup VPS at Contabo.

I will run everything on the dedicated server: BitTorrent Sync, Pulse, backup, blog and email server.

Google's latest service, Google Inbox, shows that you must move on and use a paid email service or even run your own mail server.

The dedicated server has an Intel Xeon E3-1245, 2 3,0 TB SATA Enterprise HDDs and 16 GB RAM DDR3 ECC.

It is running FreeBSD 10.0 AMD64 with mirrored ZFS.

John Gruber linked to a book with the title You're My Favorite Client by Mike Monteiro.

I followed the link and saw a great thing what Amazon and others should do by default.

As you can see, you have three options to buy this book. The most interesting option, at least to me, is the last one: buying the paperback and the ebook at the same time. But here is the most important thing: the price for this option is not a sum of price for the paperback and the ebook if you would buy them seperated (if you would buy the paperback and ebook, both separated, you would pay $27.). The price is lower, for exactly 20 %.

In the chain of demand and supply some just do not get it how to make more money. Sometimes lower price can mean bigger revenue.

Think about this.

I wrote yesterday that I will wait with Yosemite's upgrade. It seems that I made the right decision. It seems that Yosemite does not like the content of /usr/local, where Homebrew (amongs others) has its home.

So read Jim Lindley's post how to avoid the upgrade problem with Yosemite.

While I write this post, I download Yosemite on the 2007 MBP. I'm also searching Twitter for other Yosemite issues (if there are any).

Today is an another Apple event. I assume that Yosemite will be released today.

But I will not install it. Lately, Apple is making mistakes with software. Remember iOS 8.0.1?

I will wait first for some reviews and will see if the new major version OS X is stable enough.

If you are on Mac, you must read this post by Katie Floyd. You don't have to follow her advice and use the same apps, only read the post and make your own strategy.

Regarding backup apps, Carbon Copy Cloner is my favorite backup app for Mac. Some like CrashPlan or Backblaze, which are also backup services, but I don't like them. I tried them but I really quickly realized that these apps/services are not for me. Tell me this: which serious backup provider is using Java for its backup app?

Or why can I not restore single files?

That is why I like having more control over my backup and that is the reason I chose Attic backup.

This blog post was created with Drafts 4 on my iPhone. The post was published with Drafts 4.

I don't know what to think about the latest Dropbox password leak/hack. Dropbox said it has not been compromised.

The problem, as I see it, is pretty simple: people use the same password(s) on multiple services. If one service gets hacked and you used the same username/email and password for an another service, then there is a chance that also your second service will be compromised.

To avoid this, use password managers. I use 1Password (it is a paid app). LastPass is free. Use a different password for every single service and you will lower the chance to get hacked.

Password managers offer strong and long passwords. But these kind of passwords can only prevent successful brute force attacks. Because if your service provider does not enough to protect its database with your credentials, then your strong passwords are useless.

Trust nobody and protect the services you use as much as possible.

Speaking of Solaris, it has a great documentation support. All sort of documentation. At one place.

This is an example how an OS support should look like.

So check the Solaris 11.2 information library.

One tip: don't read the HTML version of the documentation, read the PDF version of the documentation instaed. The HTML version is an outliner what means too much mouse clicking if you want to go through the documentation. Mouse scrolling in the PDF version of the documentation means a smoother way of reading.

Solaris has a very powerful tool, Fault Management Architecture (FMA). What it does, can you read in this presentation by Ryan Matteson.

The FMA does not have a built-in support for email notifications and that is the reason why Ryan wrote a script to get email notifications from FMA.

You can get the script here. Read the script how to install it.

Ind.ie Pulse is an open sync and cloud service for Mac, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris.

The thing is that I have two servers on the web: one running Linux, the other is running FreeBSD. One thing I miss is a Dropbox server binary for FreeBSD. If Dropbox would support FreeBSD, I could totally ditch Linux (I was a big fan of Linux and used it a few years before I switched to OS X but I always wanted to run a server on BSD. A real server. Yes, VPS is a real server to me. A VPS is pretty affordable these days, although it was not easy to find a cheap VPS with big storage that could run FreeBSD. Thanks to the Web, I found Backupsy).

Fortunately, I also found Pulse. And since my HP ProLiant MicroServer N54L runs Solaris 11.2, I can sync files between my two servers, iMac and NAS now.

Blogging from iPhone works now (I use Pelican for my blog). All you need is Launch Center Pro and Drafts with two actions: one action in Launch Center Pro that creates a Markdown template for Pelican in Drafts and one action in Drafts that saves that template on Dropbox.

I write this post in Drafts. Just for fun.

I will write a few detailed posts how is my blog working and what are my future plans related to Pelican.

I thought that I could switch from Pelican to Kirby but Kirby has one big disadvantage (at least to me): every single post has to be in its own folder. So I stayed with Pelican. And I still search for a great Pelican theme.

Mobile blogging is finally working.