Todd Huss » OSX

Backup your Gmail

Todd Huss — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 17:09:11 +0000

Like all hosted services, you should never depend on one provider to both manage your data and also back it up. I have 15 years of email in my Gmail account (that I migrated from previous providers) and I’d be pretty sad if I were to lose it.

As some users have discovered the hard way, if your Gmail account gets compromised and your email is deleted, you’ll likely never get it back unless you have an off-site (outside of Google) backup.

One great service that does this for you is Backupify and their free plan will backup mailboxes up to 1GB. I personally love cloud data but prefer local backups so I use Getmail which is a little Python script to download my email. Here’s a more detailed post on how to setup Getmail by Matt Cutts. That said, I have my script backup my entire mailbox (instead of just my inbox) and I use IMAP instead of POP so here’s my getmail.gmail config file:

[retriever]
type = SimpleIMAPSSLRetriever
server = imap.gmail.com
username = myemail@mydomain.com
password = mypassword
mailboxes = ("[Gmail]/All Mail",)

[destination]
type = Mboxrd
path = ~/gmail-archive/gmail-backup.mbox

[options]
verbose = 2
message_log = ~/.getmail/gmail.log
read_all = false

Encrypting sensitive files on Mac OS X

Todd Huss — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 04:26:57 +0000

I was looking for a solution to keep my financial data (quickbooks, excel, important documents, etc…) encrypted on OS X so that if my laptop were stolen, lost, etc… I wouldn’t have to worry about it. I also like to backup my data to my colocated Linux server so in the event that that machine were compromised I wanted to be protected. As it turns out, Mac OS X has the perfect solution for this: read-write encrypted disk images. Here’s how you do it:

1. Applications -> Utilities -> Disk Utility
2. Click New Image and then enter a filename, select Encryption AES-128, read-write disk image, and pick a disk size large enough to hold your data. It’s too bad it can’t dynamically grow as needed but you can always create a new and larger image if you outgrow the current one.
3. Click Create and enter the password you want to secure your files with and uncheck Remember password (add to Keychain) and then click OK. If you add the password to the keychain and your laptop is stolen then your no better off.

Now you can click on the .dmg file it created, enter your password, and the volume will show up on your desktop. Add any files you’d like to it, modify them, do whatever, and then when you’re done eject the volume. Voila, you now have an encrypted virtual disk where you can store you sensitive data.

Hibernate with the MacBook Pro

Todd Huss — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 03:25:37 +0000

Thanks to Dion for pointing out how to get your MacBook to hibernate! When I wrote about switching to the MacBook Pro one of my complaints was that upon shutting the lid the laptop doesn’t hibernate, it sleeps, and they offer you no easy way to switch it via the GUI.

I don’t mind waiting a for my laptop to start when I open the lid and the little white sleeping light drives me nuts, especially if I forget and leave it in our bedroom before going to bed. That sucker lights up the room at night!

So I added the two aliases that Dion suggest, sourced my bashrc, ran hibernateon, shut the lid, and off goes the light… amen!

alias hibernateon='sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 1'
alias hibernateoff='sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0'

Disassembling the MacBook Pro

Todd Huss — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 16:19:39 +0000

I had quite a scare today when my new MacBook Pro wouldn’t boot. It would turn on, the screen would go white, and after about 20 seconds it flashed a question mark in a box on the screen. I thought it might have been related to a very minor drink spill incident (which resulted in my purchase of an iCurve stand) but it worked after the spill so I was a bit perplexed. I was not looking forward to going to the Apple store and parting with the laptop and getting charged a bundle so I opted for a little DIY troubleshooting.

I didn’t have the Apple install DVD with me (they were at the office) so I dropped in an XP install CD (I’m running the latest firmware which can boot those), booted that, and it told me it couldn’t find a hard drive. Then I went looking on how to disassemble the MacBook so I could pull the hard drive and test it. Thank god for ifixit.com’s complete MacBook Pro disassembly instructions, I followed those to remove the 20 or so necessary screws and open it up to get to the hard drive. I didn’t have the requisite T6 Torx screwdriver required by 2 of the screws but I managed to get by with a small allen wrench which fit well enough.

With the MacBook totally open I was able to remove the hard drive. My plan was to test it in my PC laptop to see if the BIOS would recognize it but before doing that I just reinstalled the hard drive to make sure no connectors were loose. Low and behold just disconnecting and reconnecting it did the trick.

I followed the instructions in reverse order to reassemble it and after about 45 minutes I’m back working on it now. Phew!

Ruby on Rails Mac OS X Intel Binary

Todd Huss — Sun, 26 Mar 2006 00:03:10 +0000

Update 8/13/06: Upgraded to Rails 1.1.6
Update 5/10/06: Upgraded to Rails 1.1.2 and built Ruby with the ri docs per Duncan McGregor’s comment
Update 4/7/06: Upgraded to Rails 1.1.1
Update 3/28/06: Now that Rails 1.1 has arrived I’ve upgraded this package to include it.

Here are the Installation Instructions and here is the all-inclusive ~9MB file to download: RubyOnRailsMacIntel-1.1.6.tar.bz2. If you would prefer to build from source here is my updated version of Geoffrey’s do it all ru-ra-lim.sh script that now works on Mac Intel too.

I’ve created a Mac Intel binary distribution of Ruby on Rails with Lighttpd based on the work of Geoffrey and Dan. It includes:

Ruby 1.8.4, Readline 5.0, RubyGems 0.8.11, Rails 1.1.2, FastCGI 2.4.0, RubyFastCGIBindings 0.8.6, PCRE 6.6, and Lighttpd 1.4.11.

I did not include MySQL because I didn’t want to presume if you prefer MySQL 5 or 4.1 and MySQL offers Intel binaries for the Mac.

I created this binary distribution for 3 reasons:

1. I don’t believe your average user should be required to build from source to get up and running.
2. The previous mentioned solutions installed into /usr/local/. I prefer to install in a dedicated application directory I can simply delete when I want to uninstall. So I’ve got it all going under /usr/local/ror. Want to uninstall? Just delete /usr/local/ror.
3. I couldn’t find a Mac OSX Intel binary of Ruby on Rails with Lighty anywhere.

Let me know if you find this useful or if you have problems!