SelfImage Hard Disk Imaging Utility
If you've been using Acronis at work to rip disk images and were looking for an alternative for home use, try SelfImage, a free open source hard disk imaging utility. SelfImage is capable of making an image file of a hard disk or hard disk partition, and can restore an image back to any drive or partition that doesn't have open files. Useful for making backups and unlike dd for Windows (or cygwin), SelfImage is capable of creating an image of a partition that is currently in use.
SelfImage can even create images of partitions that Windows doesn't recognize (partitions that Windows doesn't have mounted on a drive letter). This is perfect for the dual-boot system, you can create an image backup of a Linux partition directly from Windows.
Features include:
* Create 1:1 image files of any mounted (or unmounted on Windows 2000/XP) hard disk partition.
* Can create an image of an entire hard disk, including the master boot record, partition table, and all partitions (Windows 2000/XP)
* Restore previously created images to any partition, even mounted ones, as long as it doesn't have open files.
* On-the-fly compression accelerated with parallel CPU support to take advantage of today's hyperthreaded, multi-core and SMP systems.
* Skip reading a disk's "free space", treating it as if it were zero. This decreases the size of a compressed image and makes it process MUCH faster. NEW Version 1.2.0 can now do this for Linux ext2/ext3 partitions as well.
* NEW Available as an experimental BartPE plugin for use in boot/rescue CDs. SelfImage is also included on the excellent Ultimate Boot CD for Windows (UBCD4Win).
* Network Block Device support to make images of disks on remote machines, and restore back to them.
* Multi-threaded design for maximum throughput and low CPU overhead.
* It's free software - free as in cost, and free as in open source - released under the GNU General Public License.
SelfImage is a new project. As such, there are lots of plans for the future. Keep an eye on this project as there are many new features on the drawing board.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Thursday, May 15, 2008
FuelFrog gas mileage tracking
Track your gas mileage with FuelFrog
If you are tired of digging through the fast food cups and bags in your passenger seat floor to find a scrap of paper you've been using to keep up with your gas mileage, here's another option from FuelFrog. Ok, so yeah this is another one of my Twitter mashup services. FuelFrog's premise is very simple, at the time you fill up with fuel you enter your miles traveled since your last fill-up, cost per gallon and number of gallons and FuelFrog does the rest. You'll see trending of your fuel costs and average miles per gallon. A future release will include the ability to trend your make/model vehicle against similar vehicles nationwide or even possibly globally.
If this was an online only application it would be somewhat useful, but probably not used unless you were just anal about tracking your gas mileage. What makes this service usable is, yes, it's integration with Twitter. At the very moment that you fill up your vehicle with fuel you can SMS your information to FuelFrog using the Twitter direct text function. Enter your fuel data (miles, price, gallons) and send to FuelFrog via Twitter. Example: @fuelfrog 342 3.239 10.293. You can then log into your FuelFrog account and see your MPG trending; a downward trend would be an incentive to go get those fuel and air filters changed and schedule that tune-up you've been putting off.
So, for those of us that like to track these but can't keep up with our mileage log books, here's a great, instant gratification solution. As always, give me feedback on how useful this service has been for you.
If you are tired of digging through the fast food cups and bags in your passenger seat floor to find a scrap of paper you've been using to keep up with your gas mileage, here's another option from FuelFrog. Ok, so yeah this is another one of my Twitter mashup services. FuelFrog's premise is very simple, at the time you fill up with fuel you enter your miles traveled since your last fill-up, cost per gallon and number of gallons and FuelFrog does the rest. You'll see trending of your fuel costs and average miles per gallon. A future release will include the ability to trend your make/model vehicle against similar vehicles nationwide or even possibly globally.
If this was an online only application it would be somewhat useful, but probably not used unless you were just anal about tracking your gas mileage. What makes this service usable is, yes, it's integration with Twitter. At the very moment that you fill up your vehicle with fuel you can SMS your information to FuelFrog using the Twitter direct text function. Enter your fuel data (miles, price, gallons) and send to FuelFrog via Twitter. Example: @fuelfrog 342 3.239 10.293. You can then log into your FuelFrog account and see your MPG trending; a downward trend would be an incentive to go get those fuel and air filters changed and schedule that tune-up you've been putting off.
So, for those of us that like to track these but can't keep up with our mileage log books, here's a great, instant gratification solution. As always, give me feedback on how useful this service has been for you.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Open Source Virtualization with Virtualbox
Virtualbox's new version 1.6 is released
If you've been searching for an inexpensive virtualization solution for your laptop or desktop, here's a free, open source solution. Recently purchased by SUN, Virtualbox is an open source virtualization solution for the x86 hardware platform. Though it purports enterprise capability, my experience so far has been in using it as a desktop alternative to VMware Workstation which has a list price of $189.00. I have tested on Ubuntu 7.10 and Windows XP host OS with CentOS (RHEL4), Fedora Core 6, Windows XP SP2, Windows 2000 and Ubuntu 7.10 desktop as guests, all with great performance. My favorite features are the "seamless" mode with the ability to scroll my cursor to the guest OS screen and shared folders, allowing me to share host folders as a network share to the guest OS.
Virtualbox has binaries for Windows, Linux, Mac and OpenSolaris host operating systems and runs a rich list of tested Guest Operating Systems including Windows 98 thru Vista, most Linux versions and even OS/2 and ReactOS support. Touting a modular development methodology and full SDK for developing additions, Virtualbox offers not only the base functionality found in other very expensive solutions, but also has features not present in some more popular virtualization platforms such as the following list from the Virtualbox site:
* Virtual machine descriptions in XML. The configuration settings of virtual machines are stored entirely in XML and are independent of the local machines. Virtual machine definitions can therefore easily be ported to other computers.
* Guest Additions for Windows and Linux. VirtualBox has special software that can be installed inside Windows and Linux virtual machines to improve performance and make integration much more seamless. Among the features provided by these Guest Additions are mouse pointer integration and arbitrary screen solutions (e.g. by resizing the guest window).
* Shared folders. Like many other virtualization solutions, for easy data exchange between hosts and guests, VirtualBox allows for declaring certain host directories as "shared folders", which can then be accessed from within virtual machines.
A number of extra features are available with the full VirtualBox release only (see the "Editions" page for details):
* Virtual USB Controllers. VirtualBox implements a virtual USB controller and allows you to connect arbitrary USB devices to your virtual machines without having to install device specific drivers on the host.
* Remote Desktop Protocol. Unlike any other virtualization software, VirtualBox fully supports the standard Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). A virtual machine can act as an RDP server, allowing you to "run" the virtual machine remotely on some thin client that merely displays the RDP data.
* USB over RDP. With this unique feature, a virtual machine that acts as an RDP server can still access arbitrary USB devices that are connected on the RDP client. This way, a powerful server machine can virtualize a lot of thin clients that merely need to display RDP data and have USB devices plugged in.
Whereas Virtualbox, also known on the SUN website as xVM Virtualbox, competes in the space with VMware Server, VMware's free version of their platform that requires an underlying operating system much like Virtualbox, SUN has also launched a hypervisor-based product in xVM Server as well as xVM Ops Center for managing virtual machine images.
VMware has a pronounced advantage over SUN in this space with VMotion technology that allows running virtual machines to be moved between physical hardware with no down time, as well as support for a wider range of guest operating systems. I'm told that xVM will have vMotion-like capabilities soon, but I've seen no announcements.
Watch for SUN to make a big play in the consolidated desktop virtualization space, with their Virtual Desktop connection broker software. Vendors in this space see the desktop as the next great virtualization frontier and SUN is in the hunt. On top of that SUN has a partnership in place with Microsoft to grant interoperability and high performance for Windows virtual machines.
SUN's competitors in the virtualization race on x86 are VMware, Microsoft, Virtual Iron, Novell, Red Hat, Citrix and Parallels.
If you've been searching for an inexpensive virtualization solution for your laptop or desktop, here's a free, open source solution. Recently purchased by SUN, Virtualbox is an open source virtualization solution for the x86 hardware platform. Though it purports enterprise capability, my experience so far has been in using it as a desktop alternative to VMware Workstation which has a list price of $189.00. I have tested on Ubuntu 7.10 and Windows XP host OS with CentOS (RHEL4), Fedora Core 6, Windows XP SP2, Windows 2000 and Ubuntu 7.10 desktop as guests, all with great performance. My favorite features are the "seamless" mode with the ability to scroll my cursor to the guest OS screen and shared folders, allowing me to share host folders as a network share to the guest OS.
Virtualbox has binaries for Windows, Linux, Mac and OpenSolaris host operating systems and runs a rich list of tested Guest Operating Systems including Windows 98 thru Vista, most Linux versions and even OS/2 and ReactOS support. Touting a modular development methodology and full SDK for developing additions, Virtualbox offers not only the base functionality found in other very expensive solutions, but also has features not present in some more popular virtualization platforms such as the following list from the Virtualbox site:
* Virtual machine descriptions in XML. The configuration settings of virtual machines are stored entirely in XML and are independent of the local machines. Virtual machine definitions can therefore easily be ported to other computers.
* Guest Additions for Windows and Linux. VirtualBox has special software that can be installed inside Windows and Linux virtual machines to improve performance and make integration much more seamless. Among the features provided by these Guest Additions are mouse pointer integration and arbitrary screen solutions (e.g. by resizing the guest window).
* Shared folders. Like many other virtualization solutions, for easy data exchange between hosts and guests, VirtualBox allows for declaring certain host directories as "shared folders", which can then be accessed from within virtual machines.
A number of extra features are available with the full VirtualBox release only (see the "Editions" page for details):
* Virtual USB Controllers. VirtualBox implements a virtual USB controller and allows you to connect arbitrary USB devices to your virtual machines without having to install device specific drivers on the host.
* Remote Desktop Protocol. Unlike any other virtualization software, VirtualBox fully supports the standard Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). A virtual machine can act as an RDP server, allowing you to "run" the virtual machine remotely on some thin client that merely displays the RDP data.
* USB over RDP. With this unique feature, a virtual machine that acts as an RDP server can still access arbitrary USB devices that are connected on the RDP client. This way, a powerful server machine can virtualize a lot of thin clients that merely need to display RDP data and have USB devices plugged in.
Whereas Virtualbox, also known on the SUN website as xVM Virtualbox, competes in the space with VMware Server, VMware's free version of their platform that requires an underlying operating system much like Virtualbox, SUN has also launched a hypervisor-based product in xVM Server as well as xVM Ops Center for managing virtual machine images.
VMware has a pronounced advantage over SUN in this space with VMotion technology that allows running virtual machines to be moved between physical hardware with no down time, as well as support for a wider range of guest operating systems. I'm told that xVM will have vMotion-like capabilities soon, but I've seen no announcements.
Watch for SUN to make a big play in the consolidated desktop virtualization space, with their Virtual Desktop connection broker software. Vendors in this space see the desktop as the next great virtualization frontier and SUN is in the hunt. On top of that SUN has a partnership in place with Microsoft to grant interoperability and high performance for Windows virtual machines.
SUN's competitors in the virtualization race on x86 are VMware, Microsoft, Virtual Iron, Novell, Red Hat, Citrix and Parallels.
Monday, May 12, 2008
File Hamster version control
File Hamster version tracking software (Windows)
File Hamster provides real-time version tracking for files and folders as well as backup and archiving. File Hamster is a memory-resident program that monitors the folders and files that you ask it to and keeps a copy whenever you change a file, so that you can roll back to the old version(s) if you ever need to. It also gives you the ability to create "sticky" notes whenever you make a change to a file or folder.
Once you install File Hamster you must choose which individual files and/or folders to monitor. For folders, you can tell it which file types you want monitored or excluded, and it can also watch sub-folders. Once you set up File Hamster it will then monitor files in real time. Any attempt to change or overwrite a monitored file will prompt File Hamster to instantly make a copy of the file before allowing the change. This will result in continuous real-time backups copies of your files being created that are done in the background.
When File Hamster detects a change it will flash a small window near the system tray which you can use to quickly leave a comment or note that can be referred to later if you need to remember why you made the change. All historic file versions can then be accessed from the File Hamster menu. The name of the file being monitored has to remain unchanged for File Hamster to keep taking snapshots of it. If you want to use different version names for your file then configure File Hamster to monitor the folder that you keep the file in and it will then monitor each successive file that it finds in that folder.
If you become concerned about file backups taking up too much disk space, there are a number of options: (1)set the maximum number of revisions File Hamster will keep of any single file; (2)set a time period beyond-which a revision will be discarded; (3)require a user-defined delay period between revisions; or (4)have File Hamster do compressed backups using the zip plugin, enabling file backups to be made to zip archive files.
Compatibility: Windows 2000, XP, Vista; requires .NET Framework 2.0
File Hamster provides real-time version tracking for files and folders as well as backup and archiving. File Hamster is a memory-resident program that monitors the folders and files that you ask it to and keeps a copy whenever you change a file, so that you can roll back to the old version(s) if you ever need to. It also gives you the ability to create "sticky" notes whenever you make a change to a file or folder.
Once you install File Hamster you must choose which individual files and/or folders to monitor. For folders, you can tell it which file types you want monitored or excluded, and it can also watch sub-folders. Once you set up File Hamster it will then monitor files in real time. Any attempt to change or overwrite a monitored file will prompt File Hamster to instantly make a copy of the file before allowing the change. This will result in continuous real-time backups copies of your files being created that are done in the background.
When File Hamster detects a change it will flash a small window near the system tray which you can use to quickly leave a comment or note that can be referred to later if you need to remember why you made the change. All historic file versions can then be accessed from the File Hamster menu. The name of the file being monitored has to remain unchanged for File Hamster to keep taking snapshots of it. If you want to use different version names for your file then configure File Hamster to monitor the folder that you keep the file in and it will then monitor each successive file that it finds in that folder.
If you become concerned about file backups taking up too much disk space, there are a number of options: (1)set the maximum number of revisions File Hamster will keep of any single file; (2)set a time period beyond-which a revision will be discarded; (3)require a user-defined delay period between revisions; or (4)have File Hamster do compressed backups using the zip plugin, enabling file backups to be made to zip archive files.
Compatibility: Windows 2000, XP, Vista; requires .NET Framework 2.0
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