Diary (September)

September 30th, 2001

Tape support is nearly there. So is LVM support. Neither facility was hard to add. I am not releasing any code until I am convinced that the code is stable. Expect the next release in 10-14 days.

September 29th, 2001

Testing. Testing. More testing.

I wonder if Mondo/Mindi will work with Mandrake 8.1? I'll download it today and try it out.

Mondo will soon support tape streamers and LVM's. Devfs will be next. Items 1 and 2 will be supported by the end of next week. Devfs may take longer. We'll see.

September 28th, 2001

Mondo v1.15-r4 and Mindi v0.41-r5 are out.

September 26th, 2001

Another day, another release (two - one for Mindi, one or Mondo). They fix a multitude of sins - er, bugs.

September 24th, 2001

I have purchased and installed a Seagate Something-or-other (TM) 8 GB tape streamer. I am now going to make Mondo work with tapes. Woohoo. The fun never ends. :)

September 23rd, 2001

Mondo v1.15r2 and Mindi v0,42r3 are out. They are 'bugfix' releases. I hope they really do fix the bugs.

September 22nd, 2001

Mondo v1.15r1 and Mindi v0.41r2 are out. They look good so far. Mindi's new release is technically very different from the last but functionally it is almost identical. Mondo's new release, likewise, has changed a lot under the hood but the average user will not know the difference.

I am implementing LVM support as you read this. The latest (unreleased) version of Mindi will recognize and document existing LVM partitions; the latest (unreleased) version of Mondo will backup said partitions as usual and will format and restore them at boot-time. Neat-o. I am not going to take any chances, so please do not expect to see LVM support before mid-October.

September 21st, 2001

Minor, cosmetic bug in Mindi v0.41-r1; I'm releasing r2 just to keep people happy. Also, I'm working on LVM support for Mondo.

September 20th, 2001

Mindi v0.41-r1 is way cool. I can fit my crucial system components onto 3 disks (1 boot, 2 data). It used to take 5 or 6 disks to do the job. Thanks to BusyBox, that number has been trimated. BusyBox is too darn cool.

September 18th, 2001

BusyBox rules. Check it out. It is so darn cool. Debian uses is, Lineo uses it and now I am using it. I'm incorporating it in Mindi right now.

...OK, done. :-) That was painless. Mindi v0.41 (unreleased, as of yet) uses BusyBox instead of a bus-load of the user's tools. So, it can now fit a typical user's kernel, modules and tools onto THREE FLOPPIES - one for boot, 2 for data. Oh, and I have ordered a tape streamer. Mondo will soon support tape backup. Woohoo!

September 17th, 2001

Mindi v0.41 (unreleased as of yet) does a much better job than previous versions of squeezing as much information as possible onto each floppy disk image. It can comfortably fit my system's crucial files onto 3 floppies plus boot disk. That's four disks. It used to be 6 or 7. If I can get it down to 2+boot then it will really be worth looking at making Mondo work for tape streamers, too. At the very least, it makes Mindi Linux a much more palatable solution for regular PC users who are having trouble with their PC's and their CD-ROM drives at the same time.

September 16th, 2001

Mondo v1.14 r7 and Mindi v0.40 r5 are out. They are looking very good. All feedback is appreciated. Now that they spit out 'bugballs' (tarballs containing bug reports), you have no excuse for not sending me detailed feedback on what happened, why your computer doesn't like Mondo, etc.

I really want to make Mondo work with tape streamers. I am looking at tape streamers now, on www.pricewatch.com, to see if I can afford one.

September 15th, 2001

Mondo is finally stabilizing. I have bought a new 8x4x32 CD-RW drive: the old one was a cheap piece of crap and it lasted less than 3 months. I cannot be bothered to get a refund because I bought it on the Internet and it only cost $50. This one was nearly $100 but at least I didn't have to pay any shipping charges: I bought it from OfficeMax. If it breaks in the next 10 weeks, I only have to walk 200 yards to exchange it for a non-sucky one.

The checksum comparison code was broken but I have now fixed it. The archives were good but the restore phase reports that it wasn't! This was of course very disturbing to the users of the program.

Other than that ...

September 13th, 2001

I am still battling with Mindi, modules, etc. All feedback is appreciated.

September 12th, 2001

I have released a new, er, release :) of Mindi because Mindi was generating a module-loading script that did not work at boot-time. This has now been fixed.

Mondo v1.14 r6 is out. Bugs fixed. Yada yada.

September 9th, 2001

Wow, I really screwed that one up! :-) I released Mondo v1.14 r4 with a dependency on Mindi v0.40; the latter was not available at the time. So, I quickly released Mondo v1.14 r5 and Mindi v0.40 r1; problem solved.

I have received a detailed report from Terry P., who tells me Mondo does not play nicely with Windows 2000. I really wish I had a copy of Win2K so that I could look at that particular problem. Are any other Mondo users having trouble with Lin/Win dual-boot backups?

September 8th, 2001

Mindi v0.39 (rel. 9) is out. It has some minor bugfixes which only apply to people using devfs and people trying to backup their computers without mounting their swap partitions first.

Mondo v1.14 (rel 4) is out. I have run some pretty thorough tests on it and it rocks. If you find a bug, please let me know, but I have backed up my system successfully with it and the archives match the live filesystem. I have not finished writing the code that will verify the archives at backup-time but that's OK, you can boot from the CD and type 'compare' for now. That's what I always do, anyway. Be thorough, I say.

Mad love goes out to Mark Hannah, Faster-Laster and the other Mondo users coming up. Also, props to Stephen, Rimboy and Faster-Laster. Finally, a big, British-style shout-out to Big Al. The world ain't ready...

September 7th, 2001

Mondo v1.14 (rel. 3) is out. I have backed up my PC successfully using rel. 2; I have not even tested rel. 3 yet but it has a yummy new "CD x% burned" dialog box. So, when you are backing up your PC, you know roughly how long it will take and how long your computer is taking to burn CD #n. It's a lot better than v1.13, that's for sure.

v1.14 has some very nice features (IMO) which you will love when you try it. Just don't try it yet, unless you feel adventurous.

September 6th, 2001

Mondo v1.14 (rel. 2) is out. It is a beta-quality release. I am still testing it. It looks really good but do not trust it yet, please.

September 5th, 2001

Mindi v0.39 (rel. 8) is out. It solves a lot of kernel-related problems. Please try it. I am working hard to get Mondo v1.14 ready for an official release. In the meantime, please give the new Mindi release a try.

September 3rd, 2001

Mondo v1.14 (beta) is out. I am pleased to announce that I have finally gotten around to porting mondo-tarme, the script at the heart of the backup side of Mondo, to C. This will obviate an obscure bug in bash, increase the overall stability of the code, and provide users with better feedback thanks to mondo-tarme.c's use of the newt library. I am still testing it. However, it looks a heck of a lot slicker than v1.13!

September 1st, 2001

I had written an enormous, long-winded entry about dating, debugging and emigrating but I then lost it when I did a bit of fancy editing. So, in short, I've released Mondo v1.13 r8 and I've worn out 2 or my 3 CD-RW disks. Mondo is getting better all the time but I still need your bug reports. Please include all your logs, especially /var/log/mondo-archive.log and the boot-time /tmp/mondo-restore.log; also please send me your original /etc/fstab, /etc/lilo.conf and the boot-time /tmp/mountlist.txt.

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