lundi 30 mai 2016

A new self-hosted home server

My ageing eSATA SheevaPlug is running a lot of tasks:

  • web, e-mail, and xmpp server;
  • database server;
  • NFS and DLNA (media) server;
  • sync server for contacts, calendars, files, and Firefox profiles (old protocol);
  • and various means of connecting remotely.

It is now running Debian Jessie, after having run Lenny, and then Wheezy, which shows just how long it’s been running, considering the long lifetime of a major Debian version :-D

With only a half-GB of RAM, it’s come to the point where swap is being used on a regular basis, although not too much so far. As for the processing power, everything works, albeit slowly; reasonably so… so far. And more importantly, anything more is impossible (eg. nice ownCloud modules, or a sound server…).

The time has come to plan a replacement, which is the subject of this post.

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jeudi 21 janvier 2016

Command-line and Web Interface for Paperwork

I am very fortunate that one jflesch on GitHub decided one day to create Paperwork! This excellent program evolved very quickly and is still improving. I manage all my official documents, invoices, and such, in Paperwork. Scan by scan, PDF import by PDF import, I am slowly approaching the 2000 documents, or 5000 pages. This program has proved invaluable in the past year alone, both for speeding up the processing of new documents, and for looking for old documents.

Yet I miss one feature: the possibility to search the database of documents (which is on my home server) from any computer or mobile device, without having to launch Paperwork, which is only installed on the main family PC.

Besides, as I often connect to my server from distant places using OpenSSH, the possibility to do command-line searches would be a big improvement over my current use of find, grep, etc. Or I should rather say, my former use of find, grep, etc. Because…

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dimanche 17 janvier 2016

Secure personnal backup in the Cloud(s) using Linux

Like everyone, I have important data on my computer. Like everyone, I have a backup (several, actually) of this important data —you do too, don’t you?— But while this backup is good enough in case I have a hardware failure, it won’t help me if my apartment gets flooded or catches fire. That’s because the data and its backup are stored in the same place. Several solutions exist.

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samedi 16 janvier 2016

Extraire un tableau d’un PDF pour importer les données

J’ai recommencé à tenir mes comptes dans l’excellent GnuCash. Comme je n’ai pas le temps (ni l’envie) de tout saisir pour ensuite rapprocher les comptes, j’importe les données depuis les fichiers téléchargés sur Internet et je me contente d’affecter les revenus et dépenses, et vérifier que tout est normal.

Mais tous les organismes ne fournissent pas de fichiers directement exploitables. Beaucoup se contentent de fichiers PDF…

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lundi 3 août 2015

Synchronisation de fichiers légère, pour ownCloud et WebDAV

J’ai récemment commencé à utiliser ownCloud pour la synchronisation de fichiers. En fin de compte, malgré quelques problèmes à la marge, l’expérience est vraiment satisfaisante, à tel point que j’ai déplacé sur ownCloud tout mon « nuage personnel », précédemment sur un partage NFS. Néanmoins, si le client ownCloud standard convient lorsqu’il est disponible, il ne l’est pas toujours. En particulier :

  • Je transporte avec moi sur clef USB un bureau Linux léger basé sur TinyCore Linux, et pour lequel ce client n’existe pas.
  • Je possède aussi un vieil ordinateur portable qui doit se contenter d’un système d’exploitation obsolète à cause d’un composant vidéo bogué, qu’aucun système plus récent ne supporte (bien que cette même référence de composant graphique sur un autre ordinateur portable soit parfaitement supportée…).

Pour de telles situations, j’ai essayé d’utiliser DavFS, qui s’est avéré bien trop lent ; cela reste toutefois un bon second choix. Puis j’ai essayé le programme Java WebDAV-Sync, mais bien que celui-ci ait correctement effectué l’import initial, on ne peut pas dire que la synchronisation ait vraiment fonctionné : l’ensemble des données était à nouveau intégralement téléchargé à chaque nouvelle tentative de synchronisation !

Donc j’ai créé mon propre outil de synchronisation, dont les seules dépendances sont curl et bash, et optionnellement ssh. Ces dépendances sont disponibles partout, même sur Windows et quelques systèmes embarqués ;-)

This article is also available in English.

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dimanche 2 août 2015

Lightweight file synchronization for ownCloud and WebDAV

I recently began using ownCloud for file synchronization. All in all, although there are some minor hindrances, the experience is really satisfying. So much so, that I moved all my “personal cloud” data to ownCloud, from the previous NFS share. However, although the regular ownCloud client is just fine where available, it is not available everywhere. In particular:

  • I carry around on a USB stick a lightweight Linux desktop based on TinyCore Linux, for which the client is not available.
  • I also have an old laptop that is stuck with an obsolete operating system because the video chipset is buggy, and no newer OS will support it (even though the “same” chipset reference in another laptop works just fine…).

For these situations, I tried using DavFS, but this solution was much too slow; it is a great fall-back, though. Next I tried the Java program WebDAV-Sync, but although the initial download went fine, sync did not work all that well: the whole share was fully downloaded again each time!

So I created my own synchronization tool, the only dependencies of which are curl and bash, and optionally ssh. These dependencies are available everywhere, including Windows and some embedded systems ;-)

Cet article a été traduit en français.

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mercredi 1 juillet 2015

Aujourd'hui est un jour spécial

Jul 1 01:59:59 myserver kernel: [100093.877018] Clock: inserting leap second 23:59:60 UTC

dimanche 7 juin 2015

Both virtual and real users in the same domain with Exim and Courier

My personal server only served a few real users to this day, which means that each of us had an account on the server, that owned files and could run commands, schedule tasks, and so on.

I just extended my hosting perimeter, but I only allow email usage for my new guests so far. With this in mind, I did not want to create new Linux accounts, which would have needlessly weakened my server by exposing it to attacks towards these new accounts. Thus I created my first virtual users, for electronic mail.

I found several configuration examples on the Internet, but those mostly addressed situations where all users were virtual, often in several domains, or where a given domain was targeted at real users while others domains were targeted at virtual users. My wish was rather to allow new, virtual, users into my existing domains, the users of which were so far of the real kind only. Still, by taking from all those readings, it was not that hard to get there.

Cet article existe aussi en français.

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