Total Backup problems

I've been hastled by the "do_backup already running" error when using 4PSAs Total Backup. It suddenly struck me that this error might be triggered because the remote system is running a backup when the local system is trying to try connecting for storage.

The other problem I had was exponential growth of the backups - the backups were taking backups of the backups!

You need to assign an exclude path if you put the backups in the /home or /var directories as I initially tried. You can't just put them in root either!

Edit the config file: /usr/local/tbackup/paths.cfg

tar_path /bin/tar
md5_path /usr/bin/md5sum
gpg_path /usr/bin/gpg
exclude_path /boot /dev /initrd /lib /misc /mnt /opt /proc /sbin /tmp /rbackup
include_path
tar_debug_file
log_level LOG_INFO

Well at least I've got the root of that problem now!

LDAP revisited

I revisited the LDAP config this morning thinking that if things didn't work, I'd maybe get some help from Dave who left a message on the blog over night.

I reloaded the base config file for phpLDAPadmin and started to add in server information:

server name: My LDAP server
server host: ldap.server.domain.ltd
server port: 389
server base: dc=server,dc=domain,dc=tld
server auth_type: cookie

Then, login via the browser:

Login DN: cn=admin,dc=server,dc=domain,dc=tld
password: blah

And it worked!

As far as getting thunderbird to find the contact details:

Name: obvious
Hostname: obvious
Base DN: ou=personal,dc=server,dc=domain,dc=tld
Port: 389
Bind DN: cn=admin,dc=server,dc=domain,dc=tld

TBird doesn't list the entries, but it you Shift+F, you can find the entries.
Go back to Options, and under Composition->Addressing, select the Directory server.

The autopopulation of the address fields still doesn't seem to work, but I can search and find my contacts, so things are looking up.

LDAP and thunderbird

I've always hankered after a central db for contacts. I just hate that going from machine to machine means that I can't have a list of people I email regularly and when a system re-install happens, all that data is lost - it's a pain the proverbial.

I decided that I'd give an LDAP installation a try. Why not install an LDAP server on my local webserver and point all my email clients to that? Hmmm...

UbuntuForums
Linux.com

sudo apt-get install slapd ldap-utils
sudo apt-get install db4.2-util
sudo /etc/init.d/slapd restart

You shouldn't have any errors - if you do... stop and pull your hair out (life shouldn't be this tough).

phpLDAPadmin is a web-based GUI for performing LDAP maintenance.

Well, in the end... after several attempts at setting it up, I finally got some data IN... only to find that I couldn't see it in TBird or Evolution. I need to try this again at some other point in the future. Maybe future Ubuntu releases will make this a trivial task! We can only hope so.