Well it’s happened again, meaning that this isn’t the first time. I’m habitually using ‘ * ‘ on the command line and of course I shot myself in the foot today. I managed to erase everything in my home directory that’s not a directory. The hundreds of lines of useful text I’ve been carefully squirreling way over time via the copy and past function is now gone. A moment of shock, what do I do, where do I start? I remember most of it, I remember where I got some of it, but what about the obscure but useful stuff? I don’t even remember what it was that I lost, how do I get it back?
That’s when I remember, instead of buying one of those terabyte servers for a few thousand, I’ve built my own out of a Linux box! Fortunately, just recently I backed up my entire laptop too it, meaning that very important text file is quietly awaiting re-discovery. How do I prevent the loss of information? Backing-up of course, but who backs up their entire 40 gig hard drive often? It’s not my idea, and I didn’t say it first, but why not use Subversion (SVN) to keep copies of my home directory? If I don’t need them over time I can always throw them away.
Here’s a few useful subversion links:
- SVN Tutorial for Unix
- One click set-up, on Windows, with Svn1ClickSetup
- Mere-Moments Guide to installing a SVN on Windows
- PC Magazine’s article Keep Track of Your Documents
- Keeping Your Life in Subversion
Post a Comment