Recent Posts

1676

General Software Discussion / Redo Backup and Recovery

« Last post by ewemoa on October 14, 2011, 08:17 AM »

Been trying out Redo Backup and Recovery to backup and restore a system partition for Windows XP.  (Mentioned earlier by ha14.)

Sample set up:

0. Prepare a minimal updated Windows XP (mine may have been somewhere in the neighborhood of 7GB).
1. Download and burn the Redo live cd.
2. After booting from the live cd passed the initial menu, choose the menu item to install to USB device (8GB was more than enough) and follow the screens...

Sample backup usage:

1. Boot from the USB device (here, this was much faster than via optical media).
2. Choose backup and follow the screens -- choose to save the Windows XP partition to the USB device.
3. Wait a bit (less than 10 minutes here).

Sample restore usage:

1. Boot from the USB device.
2. Choose restore and follow the screens -- choose to restore the image from the USB device.
3. Wait a bit (less than for backing up here).

Recommend testing with VirtualBox first.  FWIW, the following was a nice tip for getting VirtualBox to boot from USB:

  Boot a USB Flash Drive in VirtualBox @ pendrivelinux.com

The live cd comes with a few useful apps including gparted, palimpsest (aka Disk Utility), TestDisk, a disk wiper, and Chromium.

Redo appears to be a wrapper around partclone which IIUC is used by Clonezilla (also nice but more complicated to figure out IMHO).

Update: Found a tutorial for an older version (0.9.5?): http://www.oakdome.c...e-with-usb-drive.php -- fwiw, the version I used (1.0.1) looks different (especially what shows up after the initial boot menu), but the general flow seems similar enough.

multi usb note

Had some difficulty using the live cd iso from YUMI or Sardu (may have been both) so went with a dedicated USB device.

1677

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows XP Disk Management Console Problem

« Last post by ewemoa on October 13, 2011, 02:45 AM »

FWIW, once I create non-windows partitions on a disk I try to avoid using Windows' drive manager.

-40hz (October 12, 2011, 10:46 PM)

Hmm...may be I should keep this in mind for the future...

1678

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows XP Disk Management Console Problem

« Last post by ewemoa on October 13, 2011, 01:58 AM »

I think the following is likely to be the English version of the error:

An unexpected error has occurred. Check the system event log for more information on the error. Close the Disk Management console, then restart Disk Management or restart the computer.

So I looked in Event Viewer and found what I think translates as:

Source: LDM
Type: Error
Event ID: 2
Description: The parameter is incorrect. (80070057).

Restarting Disk Management Console still shows a missing swap partition.

So far the closest report I've found is:

http://forums.window....php?showtopic=36574

1679

General Software Discussion / Windows XP Disk Management Console Problem

« Last post by ewemoa on October 12, 2011, 08:45 PM »

Tried to make an additional NTFS partition today using Windows XP's disk management console and met with an unfortunate result.

Not only was there a failure to create a new partition, but information in the MBR listing an existing Linux swap partition seems to have been altered.

Started with an extended partition containing two logical partitions (one was ext3 or ext4, and the other was the swap partition) separated by a fair bit of space.  Tried to create a logical NTFS partition between the two partitions, but received an error (sorry, it wasn't in English).  After dismissing the dialog box, disk management console displayed a layout for the disk that no longer showed the swap partition.

Got the swap partition back via TestDisk (via Parted Magic) and the UUID of the partition seemed intact.

Wondering if it was a fluke, I repeated the steps and ended up with the same result

Any one else experienced a similar situation?

1680

Developer's Corner / Re: How To Write Unmaintainable Code

« Last post by ewemoa on September 29, 2011, 04:33 AM »

From the source:

If you give someone a program, you will frustrate them for a day; if you teach them how to program, you will frustrate them for a lifetime.
- Anonymous

Thanks for sharing, Jibz!

1681

General Software Discussion / Re: 15+ useful Chrome Extensions you might not have heard of

« Last post by ewemoa on September 10, 2011, 01:02 AM »

Started using "Use HTTPS":

  https://chrome.googl...ejclpggpnhlhlhkmfidi

Added a custom entry for donationcoder.com and so far it appears to be working.

Any one else tried this?

1682

Living Room / Re: Ooh! I just successfully installed Virtualbox, and I'm hooked!

« Last post by ewemoa on September 03, 2011, 09:13 PM »

I tend to keep snapshots of my initial installation + updates so I can revert.

On a related note, for VMware player, AFAIU, there is no snapshot capability so I keep a backup of the whole directory where the guest OS is stored for restoration purposes.

Crashing Host OS

VirtualBox had been quite good until it repeatedly started restarting my host machine (!!) -- this only started happening recently, and as I understand it, the culprit is one of the many Active X controls that financial sites (in a land Renegade is familiar with) force on the user.

That got me to try out VMware player, and that didn't suffer the same problem.

However, if you do some searches you'll probably find that both VirtualBox and VMware products have had problems with some Active X controls.  So my conclusion is to keep both handy - diversification may be our friend here.

I haven't heard of other major host-os-killing situations though, so perhaps you won't ever be effected

1683

General Software Discussion / Re: Pdf tools-Getting Better

« Last post by ewemoa on September 02, 2011, 04:12 AM »

lanux128 reminded me of PDF-XChange Viewer, which currently (version 2.5.197) has the ability to add / edit bookmarks.  So far in limited testing, I've found it to work under wine ok too. 

(Didn't find any ability to import / export bookmarks though.)

1684

Python / Re: wxPython tutorial link

« Last post by ewemoa on September 02, 2011, 01:38 AM »

I've recently stumbled across the collection of tutorials at Zetcode and have started examining some of the PyQt bits.  Being a newbie on the Qt front, I don't have any sense of the tutorial quality, but what I've gone through so far seems clear enough

1685

Post New Requests Here / Re: GIMP script to batch split + rotate TIFF images

« Last post by ewemoa on September 01, 2011, 10:10 PM »

FWIW, I recently had occasion to reuse the splitting functionality described earlier in this topic:

convert inputimage.extension -gravity east -crop 50%x100% outputimage.extension

-ewemoa (March 13, 2009, 10:48 PM)

To get at the other half, I used:

[Select]

convert inputimage.extension -gravity west -crop 50%x100% outputimage.extension

Using the +repage option seemed to give better results as well:

[Select]

convert inputimage.extension -gravity east -crop 50%x100% +repage outputimage.extension
convert inputimage.extension -gravity west -crop 50%x100% +repage outputimage.extension

FWIW, it may be that +repage is only of relevance to one of the two invocations.

This was in the context of transforming an existing PDF somewhat similar in format to the TIFF described.  The original PDF in this case had side-by-side pages (instead of one above another) on each page (so no rotation required).  Perhaps the original program can be modified to operate on such PDFs

1686

Developer's Corner / Re: File Renaming: Renumbering by Calculation (e.g. even, odd)?

« Last post by ewemoa on September 01, 2011, 07:24 AM »

Thanks!  The initial stripping seems to help quite a bit

1687

Developer's Corner / File Renaming: Renumbering by Calculation (e.g. even, odd)?

« Last post by ewemoa on September 01, 2011, 06:53 AM »

Tried to figure out a simple way to renumber files of the form:

  000.ext, 001.ext, 002.ext, ...

as:

  000.ext, 002.ext, 004.ext, ...

or:

  001.ext, 003.ext, 005.ext, ...

What I ended up with was a multi-step process involving among other things, custom PascalScript via den4b's ReNamer.  For reference, the PascalScript part for even renumbering (plus prefix) was:

[Select]

var
  i: Integer;
  Number: String;
begin
  Number := Copy(FileName, 1, 3);
  i := StrToInt(Number);
  i := i * 2;
  FileName := 'a' + IntToStr(i) + WideCopy(FileName, 4, Length(FileName) - 3);
end.

This was followed by removing the prefix ('a') and appropriately zero-padding some of the filenames.

Does any one know of a simpler/easier way?  I also looked at Thunar's renaming feature and Metamorphose without coming up with anything useful.

1688

General Software Discussion / Re: Pdf tools-Getting Better

« Last post by ewemoa on August 31, 2011, 08:59 PM »

JPDFbookmarks

http://www.freewareg...using-free-software/

-cmpm (May 26, 2010, 03:09 AM)

I've used this a bit to add / edit / export (dump) / import (load) PDF outlines.  Seems to work pretty well.

It may replace my use of BeCyPDFMetaEdit for PDF-bookmark-related activities.

gripe

The shortcut keys leave much to be desired at least when using Xubuntu -- perhaps the UI-oddness is a function of the application being Java-based...

1689

Developer's Corner / Nice PDF Tutorial - Inside PDF

« Last post by ewemoa on August 26, 2011, 01:50 AM »

Came across this nice PDF tutorial:

http://home.comcast.net/~jk05/presentations/PDFTutorials.html

Looks like it's from 2005, but I'm finding it to be useful in analyzing PDF files I come across.

1690

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Review/Tips: "Scanning - VueScan and Associates" Pt.I: Intro & Bookscanning

« Last post by ewemoa on August 02, 2011, 08:06 AM »

With BeCyPDFMetaEdit or java based jPDF you can add a professional touch to your finished PDF e-book by adding bookmarks and number the e-book exactly like the original, f.e. roman numbers for the preface, arabic numbers for the main text - so that you can enter a page number directly into the application (like the excellent free PDF Xchange Viewer with direct PDF editing capability), and go to the exact corresponding page in the book.

-brahman (August 06, 2010, 04:47 AM)

Thanks for mentioning BeCyPDFMetaEdit and jPdf Tweak.

I had some success using the former to add bookmarks (a table of contents) to a PDF file using wine and was able to get the latter to start under xubuntu.  I didn't test the latter further as the former seemed to have a nicer UI for adding/editing bookmarks.

1691

General Software Discussion / Re: Full-screen calculator (free and portable)

« Last post by ewemoa on August 01, 2011, 11:22 PM »

Nice.

It even appears to work under wine

1692

JGPaiva's GridMove and Ahk Tools / Re: Gridmove showcased on hak5

« Last post by ewemoa on July 28, 2011, 09:06 PM »

Congratulations

Re: Hak5 - via:

  http://revision3.com/hak5/fixingwindars

one can get at links to segments within the show.  Nice.

1693

General Software Discussion / Re: What Android Apps Do You Use?

« Last post by ewemoa on July 27, 2011, 07:42 PM »

Came across this spreadsheet of supposedly free apks:

  https://spreadsheets...W5WMmxJMlE&gid=0

1694

Finished Programs / Re: DONE: On Screen Button That Sends Keyboard Commands

« Last post by ewemoa on July 27, 2011, 07:16 PM »

Congratulations on the release

1695

General Software Discussion / Re: Editor for PDFs: recommendations, please?

« Last post by ewemoa on July 26, 2011, 04:39 AM »

I had tried PDFEDIT (GPL'd software) under Linux, but it was quite buggy and the user interface was horrible.

-anodyne (May 05, 2011, 09:31 PM)

I've used it a bit for minor edits.  I've been lucky enough to not hit any bugs so far, but agree that the UI is less than stellar.

Still, I'm happy to have something!

1696

General Software Discussion / Re: Virtual cd/dvd drive software (2011)

« Last post by ewemoa on July 17, 2011, 07:55 AM »

Another option seems to have appeared:

  OSFMount

OSFMount allows you to mount local disk image files (bit-for-bit copies of a disk partition) in Windows with a drive letter. You can then analyze the disk image file with PassMark OSForensics™ by using the mounted volume's drive letter. By default, the image files are mounted as read only so that the original image files are not altered.

OSFMount also supports the creation of RAM disks, basically a disk mounted into RAM. This generally has a large speed benefit over using a hard disk. As such this is useful with applications requiring high speed disk access, such a database applications, games (such as game cache files) and browsers (cache files). A second benefit is security, as the disk contents are not stored on a physical hard disk (but rather in RAM) and on system shutdown the disk contents are not persistent.

OSFMount supports mounting images of CDs, which can be useful when a particular CD is used often and the speed of access is important.

1697

Developer's Corner / Re: Bourne / Bash Shell Scripting Resources

« Last post by ewemoa on July 15, 2011, 09:47 PM »

My other favorite scripting resource is the most excellent Rob Van der Woude pages

-Edvard (July 15, 2011, 01:05 AM)

Thanks for this link.  About to take a look

Don't know if you've seen this already, but the following from Shelldorado was new to me:

By the way, did you know that the command line

    $ ls -bart -simpson -is -cool

is a valid usage for the SOLARIS ls command?

1698

General Software Discussion / Re: Virtual cd/dvd drive software (2011)

« Last post by ewemoa on July 15, 2011, 07:32 PM »

No one has mentioned ImDisk I've used it for a couple of years now and I have had no problems with it.

-nite_monkey (July 15, 2011, 04:16 PM)

I have found it to be a good utility too 

1699

General Software Discussion / Re: Mp3 split program that allows for multiple cut-points before execution?

« Last post by ewemoa on July 14, 2011, 08:01 PM »

Audacity steals focus during "Export Multiple"...guess how many times...this is repeatedly annoying especially because if you happen to be typing elsewhere not only are you interrupted, you may accidentally cancel one of the exports...

-ewemoa (April 14, 2011, 04:54 AM)

I think I've come across a work-around -- use of virtual desktops.  Switching away from the desktop that audacity is running on seems to be effective in not being bothered by audacity-focus-stealing.  May be this method is more generally applicable -- though perhaps how well it works may depend on application-specific behavior and/or one's window manager / virtual desktop configuration(s).

1700

General Software Discussion / Re: Virtual cd/dvd drive software (2011)

« Last post by ewemoa on July 14, 2011, 05:43 AM »

FWIW, there's also a portable version of WinCDEmu:

  http://wincdemu.sysprogs.org/portable/