I have been looking for a way to mirror my home folder on my Macbook with a linux server (nslu2 with Unslung Linux in this case), this article describes how to do that with tools already available in Leopard.

"Home Server v2" by Montini

I assume you have a valid SSH login on the server, I simply enabled my account on the NSLU2 and assigned the proper home and shell values to it. I also assume both computers have an working installation of rsync (run rsync --version to check)

For automatic, password-less logins, first we need to generate keys for SSH, if you have them already, skip this section. Run this command on your local computer:
$ ssh-keygen -d

Now copy your public key into ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2 on the server. If this file already exists on the server, you will have to edit it, if it does not (e.g. your account is fresh) first create the ~/.ssh directory on your server (mkdir ~/.ssh), then execute this command on your local computer:
$ scp ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub yourname@yourserver:.ssh/authorized_keys2

Before we can start mirroring your home folder, we have to create a list of files we don't want to synchronize, this are the contents of my ~/.rsync/exclude file:

- .DS_Store
- Virtual Machines.localized
- Library/Mail Downloads
- Library/Caches
- Downloads/
- Applications/
- Books
- anthill_cache
- .Trash
- .localized

That's it, now all you need to do is to adapt this command to your environment,  run it and wait...
$ rsync -avzP --exclude-from=/Users/me/.rsync/exclude -4 --delete -e 'ssh -ax' ~/ you@yourserver:~/Backups/mymacbook/

you can also create a shell script so you don't need to remember the command everytime:
$ echo "rsync -avzP --exclude-from=/Users/me/.rsync/exclude -4 --delete -e 'ssh -ax' ~/ you@yourserver:~/Backups/mymacbook/" > ~/remotebackup; chmod +x ~/remotebackup
You can start the backup by executing ~/remotebackup

Torrential, Web-interface for enhanced-ctorrent and possibly other command line torrent clients. It's designed to run on embedded systems with appweb such as the NSLU2, but can be potentially installed on any system with php and enhanced-ctorrent (tested with version dnh3.1-9 only). Please leave a comment if you tried it on any other system. I am still working on GPLing the code, so be patient. I am using the config script and some ideas from a early version of Kai-T's torrent interface, however it's a complete rewrite except for the configuration read/write script.

Update: I decided to post a preview release. It's not tested, because i am not able to test properly right now (my overseas download speed at home in Shanghai is about 2kb/s right now with an enormous package loss). The code needs a clean-up, there's no installation manual and i borrowed some pieces of code from other projects, which will expect a proper attribution. If you decide to try this, please let me know how it went. Since this is just an Web interface, you need to have enhanced-ctorrent installed, i did not try to use ctorrent.

Update 07.07.07: I fixed problems with recent version of enhanced-ctorrent. Make sure you use the latest version "dnh3.1-9". Do ipkg update; ipkg upgrade enhanced-ctorrent
Update 25.07.07: Fixed the link in the installation howto... sorry.
Update 17.08.07: Quick fix in inc_functions.php for the stupid, no options "ps".
Update 21.01.09: Included many fixes, most stable release to date ;-)


Get the current Version from: Torrential on Google Code, License: GPL 2.0

Please Use the comments here or on my Torrential Google Code page to report bugs. Use the issues function of google code to submit screenshots, fixes, patches, etc! Thanks a lot!


Quick Installation HowTo on NSLU2 with Unslung 6.8:

ipkg update
ipkg install enhanced-ctorrent
ipkg install appweb
/opt/etc/init.d/S81appweb restartcd /opt/var/appWeb/web/

#get the latest link from the google code site linked above, example:
curl -O http://oz4projects.googlecode.com/files/torrentialxxxxxxx.zip
unzip torrential*.zip
chown -R nobody.everyone torrential/
mkdir /public/torrent/
chmod 777 /public/torrent/
vi inc_config.php 	#(have a look inside)
# visit: http://nslu-ip:7777/torrential/index.php
# user: giveme	pass: torrent
# click on Help.