A while ago, I started doing ZFS backups of some of my remote servers. That is daily rsyncs to a ZFS fs followed by a snapshot creation for that day. After collecting these snapshots for a while, I decided it was time to do some housekeeping and attempted to find a script that would fit my need of keeping everything tidy. In short, I found a few but none were doing things quite the way that I wanted. So I wrote my own in typical sysadmin fashion.

The above link is the script. It may fit your needs. Basically, I wanted to keep X number of daily snapshots, Y number of weekly snapshots and Z number of monthly snapshots. I even through in another slot for yearly backups, just in case. It will evaluate all your snapshots for configured (at the top of the script) filesystems and determine which ones should be kept and which ones should be destroyed. I could've gone ahead and gotten a bit more granular by going down to hourly but that's not how I'm keeping my snapshots now since once-a-day backups are good enough for me. All this script requires you to do is name your snapshots in the YYYYMMDD format, then configure which filesystems to prune and how many of each kind you want to keep.

As with any destructive script, use caution when running it. Running the script with no arguments will generate the help message and give you the possible switches. I highly suggest doing a dry run (-n) to be safe and verbose (-v) to understand what the script is doing, but you will be prompted before snapshot destruction if you run with no arguments. Filesystems and how many snapshots to keep are configured at the top of the script. I may throw in command-line options for that in the future.

Enjoy. Let me know if it works out for you.

UPDATE: darn, posted too soon. Still don't have it quite right. I'll keep working on it.

In my efforts to support IPv6 on my vservers, it threw me into using the "unstable" version of the linux-vserver patches. There are a few advantages to the latest code, not the least of which is IPv6 address support within your vservers. But it does bring me to highlight the need to keep your kernel vserver patches and the util-vserver package in parity.

I upgraded to version 2.6.31-vs2.3.0.36.23 (same deal under the currently current 2.6.33-vserver-2.3.0.36.30.4-r1 as well) and rebooted and lo and behold, all my vservers and my host system shared the same hostname. This was a peculiar problem but it is in fact related to the version of util-vserver you are running. This is not the first oddness I've seen from having them out of sync and I'm sure it won't be the last. Sure enough, upgrading my util-vserver to 0.30.216_pre2883 from 0.30.215 did the trick nicely. Reboot and you're back to normal operation.

In case you haven't been following the bugaboo with the misplaced/lost/stolen 4th generation iPhone, let me provide a quick recap according to this story at Gizmodo:

1. Apple baseband engineer field testing next generation iPhone visits bar Gourmet Haus Staudt.
2. Engineer is separated from phone. Details are sketchy on exactly how despite one detailed account.
3. "Finder" of phone unlocks it (apparently not passcoded) and browses content, quickly finds owner's name and personal information. Device is remotely wiped the following day.
4. Weeks pass.
5. Gizmodo buys iPhone for $5000 from "Finder" after being solicited via e-mail.
6. Gizmodo publishes story with pictures (including disassembly) after a week in possession of the iPhone. Cat is released from bag.

Now of course, that's not the whole story. There are twists and turns all over the place. Let's summarize those:

• Engadget was also solicited for purchasing the prototype. Since they seem to have some morals and a decent legal team (AOL's), they declined to purchase the unit. Source
• Gizmodo in their story above also felt it was necessary to post the information (name, FB profile, etc) obtained by the "Finder" about the engineer. Effectively rubbing the guy's face in it.
• Much to do has been made that Gizmodo broke the law by purchasing property it almost certainly knew to be stolen as defined by the law. Source
• Local law enforcement has indeed opened an investigation and subsequently raided an employee of Gizmodo. Source
• Finally, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has come out to support Gizmodo's stance that the search was illegal due to a shield law that prevents law enforcement from conducting raids to reveal reporter's sources. Source

The tech news circles on the Internet have been lit up with activity from this singular drama. It's interesting and entertaining from many angles and whatever the outcome from the investigation or additional litigation, it will be precedent setting.

From what I've read and what common sense would seem to indicate is that the EFF's argument is invalid since nobody believes the police raided Gawker Media (Gizmodo's parent) employee Jason Chen to find information pointing to the seller of the device. Rather, they were looking for evidence they knowingly purchased stolen property. There's a big difference between the two. It's not hard to see why the EFF would like to believe it's an online journalism issue and wants to get involved but it's a bad legal call in my view. However, I am not a lawyer.

Gizmodo's tounge-in-cheek coyness through out this entire story from reveal to fall out is nauseating. They're proud they paid for the "story". Back on planet Earth though, what they really paid for was a lost (and quite possibly stolen in the true spirit of the word) device and just happened to also write a story about it. In any case, they're proud of it. They also happily "outed" the Apple engineer that it belonged to and even going so far as to poke fun at the man. Snarky wit isn't as pleasing when an innocent person is possibly getting destroyed by it.

The Apple engineer as of this writing appears to be still gainfully employed though. My best guess is that if Apple is to pursue a civil case against Gawker, it would be in their best interest to keep him around to support the case. It's impossible to tell if he is still carrying on with his work as usual or if he's been disciplined or re-assigned but I keep my hopes up that Apple hasn't been too harsh on him. After all, we're all human and make mistakes. I certainly have during my career and are better in the long run as they've all been learning situations.

Gizmodo is now in defense mode. They may be somewhat panicking, it's hard to tell from the outside. They're still playing their innocence card and playing up advice from their COO and former lawyer that the case is indeed about information and thus are protected by shield laws. Their latest tactic is getting former Gawker employees to post stories at their new gig suggesting Apple is directly ordering law enforcement to raid Gawker. It's worth noting that the linked story's disclosure at the end was NOT present during initial posting. It was seemingly added after Daring Fireball's John Gruber pointed that fact out. Less than forthcoming for sure.

The story still rages on day by day. I'm sure I'll be writing about this topic again. For the time being, Apple has yet to pursue a civil case and I don't think it make sense for them to until after the phones release. After all, they wait until the last possible moment to file FCC papers for their new phones, why would they want more publicity about a phone they haven't announced yet? The criminal investigation will presumably continue in the direction that most sane people see what the crime actually was (that being: theft of property). And we all will have to patiently wait for the official announcement of next generation iPhone at WWDC 2010 in a little over a month.

Link: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/02/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either.html

Cory Doctorow is my favorite writer. I've read more of his books than I have all other books combined (I'm not much of a book reader... yet). He has a kind of unique quirkiness to him that allows him to envision futures not radically different from our own but ones that have a few minor skews to modern-day life that captures the spark in the end of how the future really turns out. I don't think his talent carries over to reality though.

In the linked post above, Cory explains why the iPad is a bad idea, he's not buying one and you shouldn't either. Another "slippery slope" critique. He brings up the contempt that techies have for their moms. Indeed, I did make a comment about my mom maybe being able to "get" an iPad. Call it "an incredibly low opinion" if you like, but it doesn't change the fact that a novice from another generation will never have any interest in schematics being packaged with their device. Basically, sometimes you can't teach an old dog really complicated new tricks and that's okay! If you can give them easier tools that require minimal experience to understand because they're natural and they're happy with it, let them be! Every novice doesn't need to be an expert someday.

Another point I'd like to mention is that during his diatribe, Cory points out examples of how tech has gotten more restrictive and their under-workings less accessible so that it provides less inspiration to youths that may find it empowering to learn how things work. Fine sentiment, but it completely ignores the fact that computer technology has gotten way more complicated in the intervening years since the Apple II. If you had screws in the case of your iPad, would you really learn that much more about "how it ticks"? What if you had the full schematics? What would you really be able to do with the thing with that information? Sure, many geniuses with some training could figure out somethings but your 8 year old will not.

Schematics and simplicity were things afforded by the early industry because it was just starting. The industry was barely a few years old, everyone was learning together. 35 years later, we've learned all the basic science. The evolution continues but corporate dominance rendered much of the complete openness/transparency impossible. The amount of money in R&D that goes into new products is immense and companies can't provide you with the roadmap for free. In short, your expectations are too great and reliant on an era from the last millennia.

One area I do completely agree with Cory though is that our physical mediums which we were able to call our own, trade with friends and sell second-hand are rapidly dying in this digital age and it's a terrible thing. Purchasing is now about copying. Copies that we as consumers don't have the right to distribute and doing so makes you a criminal. More of our dollars will never be able to be reclaimed when our use of the content is over. Call it evaporating money. I'd rather be able to trade or sell my purchased digital copies of things when I deem I've had enough of them. DRM could of course make that happen with ease but rights holders would make far more money on the evaporating money scenario than they would by letting us cut into their profits being able to trade and sell our downloads secondhand.

Maybe that'd be a nice idea for Cory's next story?

As the iPad prepares to debut on the scene, we've been given some time to think about the implications and think we have! I've read numerous opinions on what the iPad should be vs. what it will be. While I think some opportunities have been missed, I think overall the concept of stripped-down computing for the masses is right on track. The more I envision a world where the leisure computing we do is done not on overly-complicated, full-blown Operating System approaches but instead on slimmed-down devices where the true OS evaporates and leaves simply the application experience.

When I say leisure computing, I'm talking about most of the time we spend online doing personal things on Facebook, reading new sites, posting photos or any of the other platform agnostic things we do for fun, relaxation or enrichment. We don't need Windows or even Mac OS X or Linux for these things, so why over complicate it? Why throw up all these roadblocks to doing really simple functions for the non-computer savvy audience? I want my mom to be able to accomplish menial tasks online like being able to view pictures of her granddaughter without having to go into a dissertation on social networks and interface design. I want it to be natural for people that have never touched a computer before to be able do all the same things we take for granted when sharing ourselves online. Not all people with useful thoughts to share are fluent in using a personal computer.

Making computing simple and natural is the goal. We've attempted this before with Graphical User Interfaces. Microsoft has been at it for two and a half decades trying to achieve this and Windows still leaves a vast majority of people mesmerized about the most aspects of the OS. Many users use a fraction of the OS's capabilities. OS X is much the same story and let's not even talk about Linux. Still, the number of users today that are at least competent at basic tasks is a testament to what the GUI has given us. The success of the GUI in making computing accessible to hundreds of millions of people was a huge accomplishment but it is not the be-all, end-all of computing evolution. It's clear now that simplified platforms are going to be the next wave in making computing accessible to even more people. I'm not saying the iPad is going to be a huge success and the leader for this movement, but it definitely has lit this fire under the seats of many tech companies and got the ball rolling.

This movement will not be the death of what we know today as desktop or personal computing. There will always be a need for those complicated, full-featured environments, especially by technical professionals, engineers and scientists. Think of it as more of an extension of computing just like the GUI was more than 25 years ago. The command-line interface didn't die, it just got relegated to being used by people who needed it or even preferred that it was "harder to use". Much like the GUI, this approach may take up to 10 years to reach critical mass and get right. I think it will go much quicker and smoother than that however. Those distraught about the loss of control are missing the point of simplified computing. More restrictive interfaces and devices don't mean you're getting screwed or that the evil empire wants to control everything you do. It's merely a by-product of guiding less familiar users down the path of computing and making the experience easier and more enjoyable all around.

There has been lots of chatter among the pundits out there that there is a critical mass being reached against the use of Adobe's Flash. There are two very different sides of the argument, but the facts are obvious. The heart of the matter being the public 'leaking' of statements from that are supposedly from the mouth of Apple's Steve Jobs about his disdain for Flash and giving some firm implication that it will not be finding its way into iPhone OS any time remotely soon. This prompted individuals from Adobe to return salvo that Flash is a wonderful, enabling technology and Apple and its users are missing out by leaving support out of the platform. Regardless of the technical arguments for or against Flash, this article is more about the path from here and not a debate about using Flash vs. HTML5 or whatever rich-media language.

What was true in the pre-iPhone world is no longer true. That can be a bit overdramatic but what has changed is that we went from a world where all of the major browsers (Firefox, IE, Safari, Opera) on all the major platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux) could install a Flash plugin and view Flash content. With the introduction of one platform that outright refuses to support Flash and can do so because of its closed source nature, the game has been changed. Now, with the iPhone OS being the hold-out, not all major platforms support Flash.

What happens from here is one of two things and the action will come from one very large group, web content creators.

1) They choose to ignore iPhone OS users and continue writing web pages that include Flash content.
2) They choose to use technology that is the "lowest common denominator" and write web pages that do not include Flash content.

If you're a web developer today, you are going to take one of those two routes. There will be little flip-flopping around and after a short feeling out period, of which we are in right now, there will be big momentum behind one of two. If the iPhone OS platform were small and niche, as it was in 2007, prior to the SDK release, then it wouldn't be by definition major and this wouldn't be an issue but since the iPhone has exploded into popularity, the rules have changed.

This period before the iPad launch has made Adobe, Apple and the web developer community do some pre-fight posturing. Everybody is waiting for the main event and the remaining amount of 2010 after the iPad launch will be critical for all involved. Adobe's downside is far larger than Apple's who is still selling devices left and right with the status quo. The momentum right now is clearly on the side of Apple who with every device sold introduce another device into the wild that doesn't support Flash, lessen its ubiquity and another pebble on the scale of why you shouldn't use Flash.

As has been said by others, all you need is one to make unanimous into not. Flash support (or not but easily corrected by a plugin) can no longer be assumed. The march towards "anti-critical mass" has begun.

Today, Microsoft announced Windows Mobile 7. This looks to be their all-cards-on-the-table effort to merge the Zune and Windows Mobile and enable a credible iPhone contender. Looking at the feature chart and evolution of just the last few years of Windows Mobile brought up to me the influence that Apple's iPhone has had on the Windows Mobile platform which had years of head-start.

Reflecting upon the past 3 years with the iPhone, I thought about all the things that today seem like no-brainer features that are required of a smartphone in order move any decent number of units. I've compiled a short list of features that while Apple might not have invented, they certainly popularized with the iPhone causing the competition to adopt in order to stay competitive.

The whole paradigm of the mobile phone has even changed and shifted to "smartphones only please" atmosphere in large part to the iPhone. 'Feature phones' are still dominant but with the current momentum that the mobile market is seeing, 'feature phone' days are numbered. So with that thought in mind, what has the iPhone popularized in the 3 years on market?

1. Capacitive glass touchscreen - no more plastic-y touch film over the screen ruining display clarity and that yielding surface that flexes to your touch.

2. Multi-touch - The ability to track more than 1 touch at a time allows all sorts of more interesting interactions, like pinching and multiple virtual button presses. This opens the door to a pair of other killer features...

3. No stylus - Both of the above contribute to this "feature" but the iPhone was definitely the first phone to challenge the mobile touch screen status-quo of using tiny stylus' to accurately pin-point your press. Lately, any phone with a stylus just looks passé.

4. App Store - Love it or hate the approval process and locked-down kingdom, it does have a huge effect on the end-experience of the iPhone. The model of providing third-party apps has since been adopted by players like Google and Blackberry.

5. Virtual keyboard - Not the keyboard explicitly. I'm referring to the notion that a physical keyboard was required for fast input into a mobile device. With the capacitive glass touchscreen and large screen real estate, the iPhone effectively popularized the idea that a soft-keyboard is "good enough" to actually type quickly on.

6. Visual voicemail - The feature that was heralded as possible because of the intimate relationship between carrier and hardware manufacturer and the "first of other features" that were to be spawned off the partnership. In reality, this was the only real feature to come out of it but what a doosey. It seems like such an obvious feature now and other manufactures have rushed to implement the feature following AT&T and Apple's lead.

7. Usable Web browser - Arguably the iPhone's biggest gift to the community. Prior to the iPhone, WAP comprised most people's mobile web experience, which is to say that it wasn't the real web. More like a second-class citizen's web. Apple's use of MobileSafari in the iPhone leaned on a number of the aforementioned features to create a usable, more captivating and friendly mobile interface to the real web. Yes, mobile IE did provide this years prior on the Windows Mobile platform, but friendly it was not. The essential differentiation on experience being presentation: scroll bars vs. drag panning, easy pinch and double-tap zoom, ability to faithfully render the latest web technology (Flash not withstanding of course). If a smartphone today doesn't accurately render most web pages, it isn't considered up to snuff.

All these things together, despite the iPhone's flaws, have pushed the iPhone to accomplish its stated goal of being "revolutionary". You don't have to love it all, you don't even have to drink the Kool-aid or be sucked into the reality distortion field to see the iPhone's massive effect on today's mobile phone market.

Apple threw the word 'magical' around a lot on the greatly punned and anticipated iPad. Is it really magical? I don't think even the most hardened fanboy would believe that. Instead, it's an incremental evolution of Apple's mobile platform. Bigger screen, more possibilities for things that the iPhone/iPod Touch are too daintily small for. Did much change around the operation system? Again, no, not really, just a minor evolution again with pop-over menus.

Will the iPad be a success? Sure, because Apple these days tends not to fail. Will it be a huge success? Likely not. I see the iPad fitting neatly with sales figures akin to what the MacBook Air is to the MacBook Pro. A specialized model for specialized tastes. By that yard stick, I think the people that genuinely have a need for a small, extremely portable media and light-work device will be extremely happy with it. Those that are perfectly happy with their laptop and iPod/iPhone combo won't see a need for it and likely won't "get" the device either.

It's easy to fault Apple for a lot of things but easiest to fault them for perceived "killer" features that the whole world sees is missing from newly announced devices and for whatever reason are left out by Apple. A few of these came to mind in watching the live feed of the event and I'd like to share my list with you.

#1 Wireless sync - The AppleTV has been out for quite a while now and the very first revision shipped with wireless syncing with iTunes. After all, it's not like you're going to disconnect the whole shebang from your HDTV just to get some movies on it. So they wrote and integrated very nicely wireless syncing for the AppleTV into iTunes. This has been notably missing from the iPod/iPhone primarily to be because they're not 802.11n devices and going over 802.11g would be painfully slow depending upon how much stuff you're transferring. Well, now we have a very mobile device that supports 802.11n and sync still has to take place over that damn white dock cable. There's no technical reason for it and it's bloody annoying. Support both syncing methods!

#2 Front-facing camera - Or any camera at all! The amount of real estate used by CCDs that go into mobile devices is extremely small and given how large the iPad is compared to the iPhone which does have a camera, there really is no excuse for not building in one. But this is the thing that has bugged me most about Apple mobile devices. Apple has done a fantastic job with iChat video and yet none of the mobile devices support it because they lack a front-facing camera which every MacBook on the planet has. To me, there is no bigger reason to have a truly mobile device than to be able to use it to communicate in whatever form. This could've been the iPad's killer-app. Completely free (with data access), face-to-face video conferencing on the go. It's a huge miss in my mind to ignore what they've had the ability and nuts-and-bolts to do for years now.

#3 Multitasking - One of the reason people adore their laptops is because they're mobile, full-fledged computers. I understand that Apple wants to focus on more scaled-down devices but to think that people really want to keep hitting the home button and stopping what they're doing to say check an e-mail is asinine. The iPad has the horsepower and battery life to do, so just let people be able to run multiple apps at a time, even if it's just 2 or 3. Think PIP perhaps?

#4 No flash - Flash is somewhat of a necessarily evil these days. It sucks CPU, it sucks battery but many websites use it in some form. You're really setting the iPad up to fail when you call it the best web browsing experience yet it still has little puzzle pieces where Flash embeds should be.

Those are my four biggest gripes, but really #2 is what hits home with me. I don't think I see a need to buy an iPad but, with my girlfriend and me both sitting on the couch with laptops open is evidence to, a little streamlining of web-browsing couldn't hurt either.

UPDATE: John Gruber has written a fascinating, excellent article on Apple and Flash for further reading on point #4.