It is now two weeks my workstation has died; the long wait for a technician (the box is still under guarantee) is finally over next Monday. In the meantime, I dug out my old workstation, a P3-900 MHz, which I didn't touch for more than one year. The box runs Debian unstable, for which I dist-upgraded most parts without much hassle : X, Gnome, ssh, Firefox, Thunderbird, and basically any client program which connects to the internet. The only problem is memory : the machine only has 384 MB RAM and a swap space of 256MB, which is insanely low with current desktops like Gnome or KDE. Browsing with IceWeasel (Debianese for Firefox) feels like driving a 20 ton truck. One week countdown...


This incident made it clear that I must give some priority to backups : previously I made a seldom backup on CD-ROM or DVD, but that is work-intensive, and not much fun to do. So - with the current storage prices plummeting - I decided to shop for an external hard disk and I chose for a Packard Bell hard disk of 320GB. A quick rsync one-liner backed up most of my current files, but when I have some more time, I need to look around for some other backup methods. Maybe snapshotting (rsync or dervish), or keeping my homedir in CVS seem nice and fun projects to do.