printers for #EMP -proof #backup

12.12: summary:

. given that the policies of USA-Israel
are inciting such hostilities from
both dictators (China, Russia, Iran)
and muslims (Iran, Syria, ...),
there is a good chance USA will get
at least one EMP bomb in the next 3 years
that will destroy every electronics device
so that electronic backups of information
are not accessable until one can
import and afford another computing device .
. in the meantime,
a printout of all needed information
would come in quite handy .

optical backups are important #WWIII #EMP

2.26: co.cyb/xu/backup/optical media for EMP attacks:
linux/ Span DVD - backup software?/fisheater May 18th, 2012:

 I have 100GB of photos I would like to back up on to DVD
for remote (safety deposit box) backup.
I looked into brasero, but the documentation is lean.
I searched online and the forums with not much luck. 

optical backups are important

the warmest boots are gifts of the heart

11.30: co.fb/gear/shoes/the warmest boots are gifts of the heart:

LOOK: NYPD Cop Gives Homeless Man Boots,
Photo Goes Viral
You have to like what NYPD Officer Larry DePrimo did
for a barefoot man in Manhattan
one frigid night this month.

I cringed seeing that story,
wondering if the guy was sane eno' to say thanks .

moving vmwares to mac's external drive

5.5: sci.cyb/vmware/
sharing vm's in Share acct not possible:
 
[6.13: summary:
. mac permissions are a big hassle!
you're supposed to have 3 user folders:
one for your restricted user's personal use,
one for admn's personal use,
and a shared folder that is accessible by everyone .
. but shared access means read-only,
and read-only affects the running of
 vm's [Virtual Machines].
. I had created a 2nd restricted user's acct,
and I thought I could use the same vm's
since they were in the Shared folder,
but when I tried to run the vm's
it said I didn't have permission,
because running the vm implies modifying its files .
. if you want user accts to share completely,
you have to store the files in an external drive .]

. using vm's from another acct doesn't work
even when it's the shared acct
with permissions set to everyone can read and write .
[... because
acl's are enforcing Owners Enabled ]
. after getting all the vm's set up,
I then undid it for the experiments,
to see if the problem was sharing when
the vm's were using suspends or snapshots
(that was one problem but there were others).
. finally redid everything back to normal
but what if I wanted to work in a new acct ?

sci.cyb/vmware/sharing vm's in usb drive is possible:
. try sharing an xp and xu from the dos-formatted drive
that likely won't have acl's attached to it?
yes, that does work;
if it's the acl's, they don't seem to matter on
one partition of my firewire drive;
I have that partition named as if it's exfat-formatted,
but disk utility says the current format is Mac Journaled;
the key difference is [owners enabled: no]
the partition used by Apple`timemachine on that same drive
has answered yes to that .

5.6: proj.cyb/vmware/vm's on external drive:

( earlier,
I'd done an experiment on vmware:
can I access a vm from a new acct?
no because it's shared with an old acct
...)
. I missed the point of the experiment!
it wasn't to share vm's between accts,
it was to see if a transfer of vm's between accts
would work at all .
. what the experiments told us was that
moving the vm to the external drive
(a drive that is not Owner Enabled)
makes the vm exist without ACL-owned complications
so then after getting a copy from the external drive,
it can be run by any acct .
. and if you do want sharing
then keep it on the external drive;
but, if you don't want sharing,
then first get the vm from the external,
and copy it to the acct's drive .
. if you're not concerned that
the acct isn't owning a vm,
then keep in mind that
if using conventional disk drives
rather than solid state devices,
and if the host OS is on the internal drive
then the vm will run more efficiently on
the external drive
since the host and guest OS's
won't be having to compete for
the location of the disk's read-write arm .

. if the bank.vm should be encrypted
it could stay on the internal drive .
[6.13: (considering Lion's encryption;
later decided to stay with just encrypting data) ]

. for timemachine to work on an external drive,
you need a 2nd drive;
. you can still benefit from timeMachine's
multiple snapshots feature,
but you have to manually copy changed parts
over to the internal drive that timemachine is backing .
[6.13:
. a 3rd possibility that I finally decided on
was to put the vm on the same external drive as timeMachine,
and then put the data on the internal drive .]

. rename the external drive as Primary .
(the reason it was named exfat
is that I had it formatted to exfat
until it was found that my xp laptop
couldn't read the drive anyway
because the drive was partitioned .
. linux on the laptop can both see partitions
and read mac format .

5.8: proj.cyb/vmware/moving to new system:
. in the new system,
all vm's are on the external drive,
and prep for this includes the usual
pulling out snapshots, and shutting them down
instead of suspending them .
. inside vmware's library all the links will be bad,
so I have to delete them all and reopen each vm,
to have it listed by the library .
[...,
. if I change the name of the drive,
the library links are again shot,
so, I'd want to make sure the drive's name is ok .]

5.6: mis.cyb/vmware/easy mistake wastes a lot of time:
. I messed up the decision of
whether to say the vm was moved or copied;
I should have said I copied it
because I need to be using both instances at once,
once I answered it wrong,
I didn't see any way to undo it,
so I had to recopy the huge thing .
may have also needed to change the name
of the enclosing folder?
(you can't change the name of the vm itself
because that makes it unusable
unless you know how to patch the internal param file).

solar storm not in 2012 #cyber #backup #ups

2011.4.16: cyb/backup/solar storm

Do solar storms create hard drive data loss?
I read we are expecting increased solar storm activity for 2012.
I would like to prepare. What would be the best way to
protect sensitive data on hard drives
(backups and internal).
Would it be preferable to back up things on DVDs?
The 1989 storm managed to damage the computers
of the Toronto Stock Market.
reply:
 2012  will actually be a damn boring year.

a solar physicist: Do not worry about solar storms.
. solar and geomagnetic activity pose essentially
no risk to your data.
The biggest possible risk would be power outage,
so you could buy yourself a UPS if you are really worried,
but even then, the risk is really minimal,
since these events are predictable and power companies are
proactive about mitigating their effects on infrastructure.

If your backups are not connected to the power grid
you don't have to worry about solar storms,
because solar storms cause problems by induction.
Large loops of cable such as power grids might be affected,
but not small external hard drives.
Good back ups are not connected to the computer
they are supposed to back up 24/7.
Online backups that are located far away from your local backups
will probably not be affected by the same solar storm.

magnetic storm of September 10, 2005 over Quebec:
August 1989, another solar storm affected microchips
and caused a halt of all trading on Toronto’s stock market.
Since then, power companies worldwide have
started evaluating the risks of
geomagnetically induced currents
so that contingency plans can be put in place
to deal with any power outages.

 Officials watched in disbelief as three disc drives
 
 failed in succession on what is supposed to be
 a 'fault-tolerant' computer system.

 . most of Quebec sits on a large rock shield
that prevented current flowing through the earth,
for finding a less resistant path along the 735 kV power lines.
. Other utilities in North America, and elsewhere
implemented programs to reduce the risks associated with
geomagnetically induced currents.

links:
# geomagnetically induced currents (GICs) @solarstorms.org
# laser light and magnetic storm both em wave?

2012.1.1:
On-Line UPS Systems
eg, $273 IS250HG Isolation Transformer
-- Isolator Series UL60601-1 Listed Medical Grade Isolation Transformers
$178.99 at newegg.com
This is the highest level of battery backup protection available.
Power is first broken down and then
perfectly reconstructed by the inverter,
which is "on-line" 100% of the time.
There is absolutely no transfer switching time.
This process completely eliminates
incoming surge and line noise,
adjusts high or low voltages,
and produces perfect sine wave power.

IS250HG Medical Grade Isolation Transformer
Key Features
. offers line isolation, continuous noise filtering
and enhanced common mode surge suppression.
Internal low-impedance isolation transformer
with Faraday shield offers 100% isolation from the input AC line
Full UL60601-1 medical-grade listing with hospital-grade plug
and outlet receptacles;
Reduces the cumulative leakage current
of the Isolator and connected equipment
to levels less than 100 microamps
Secondary neutral-to-ground bonding
eliminates common mode noise,
providing an isolated ground reference
for sensitive equipment
Serves as an inexpensive alternative to dedicated circuits
and site electrical upgrades
Removes EMI/RFI noise, utility switching transients,
load-generated harmonics and ground loops
Additional surge suppression components
placed at the line input and output
combined with full line isolation
provide continuous filtering of a full range of
power line noise in all modes
Active transformer filtering offers
continuous common-mode noise rejection
with no wearable parts; unique ability to reduce surges
in the worst of power environments to harmless levels
Reduces 6000V IEEE587 Cat A&B ring wave
and combination wave test surges to only 0.5V common mode
Includes 2 widely spaced NEMA 5-15R
hospital-grade output receptacles,
a 6-ft. power cord, hospital-grade input plug,
circuit breaker overload protection and lighted power switch.

saved by backup with many snapshots

9.21: mis.cyb/fat32 sd card/corrupted:
(9.30: summary:
. only just months ago I started the policy of having
multiple backup snapshots instead of overwriting;
that turned out to be a life-saver, because,
to do overwrites safely,
you have to check every folder and file
to make sure none of them are corrupted .
)
. I tried saving html code to my sd card,
and it failed from both ko'edit and kompozer;
I thought it was a copy-protection trick ...
in fact, it's showing
everything in that folder is deleted!
log/psy now has zero items .

verifying corruption:
volume “SD2GB” ** /dev/disk2s1
** Phase 1 - Preparing FAT
** Phase 2 - Checking Directories
/PIM/2011/09 sep/0(cyb) has no clusters
/PIM/2011/09 sep/psy has no clusters
Marked 44 clusters as free
Free space in FSInfo block (141148) not correct (141192)
3306 files, 564768 KiB free (141192 clusters)

recovery by snapshot-backups:
oh, bak's are showing
those 2 folders have been empty for a while .
try a binary search:14, 17, 18 : ok?
18 14:17 is the last good;
cyb 15 9:37 (files: 15 18:48)
psy 15 18:42 (files 15 18:44)
the next is 19 18:58 -- both {psy, cyb} are missing .
cyb 19 17:50
psy 19 10:54 .

finding the cause:
. what was I doing when these changes got made?:
cyb 19 17:50
psy 19 10:54
. at 9.19.10:54 I was approaching mac,
but didn't do anything deliberate until 2 min later:

"( ... 10:56, gmail:0, log, ).

. maybe I jiggled the sd card, and lost the connection,
so it was like pulling it out without
giving the OS the warning it needed
to flush the caches and close the fs .
. at 9.19.17:50
I was about to break for some dictionary work;
1750 may have been at the time I started,
since I didn't give start-stop times for a 5-min job,
tho' it might have taken 10min

"( 17:50: this is the modify date of cyb.folder
getting corrupted . [9.21: found]
18:00?: used dictionary, )

. I remember being concerned that I was on a page
that did have ad's on it, but from the various browser logs,
{mac.safari, xu#main.vm, xu#wild.vm }
there was nothing around the time 19.18:00;
did I get ad's from mac.dictionary?
there were no ad's as I cycled through dict's history
but I think I was getting wikipedia from dictionary,
and then a link opened into safari .
. anyway,
pos.cyb/fs/sd card should be backup not primary:
. I'm working mostly from a vm,
so I keep my primary in a vmware shared folder,
and then backups happen with mac.timemachine .