Today, I’ll be taking you through another tutorial that involves using SSH to take backups of your remote servers.

As you guys might be aware that I also run a website called Geeky Ninja which is hosted by the nice folks over at Dreamhost on a Linux server.

Even though Dreamhost keeps a backup of my site, as a webmaster I’m a little paranoid about backups and worry about losing my data all the time. That is why I also backup my site to a remote location occasionally. And this is where SSH comes in.

As you guy probably know that SSH is a secure encrypted protocol to communicate between two machines. Since SSH is not a text based protocol like telnet, it is possible to transfer actually binary files using this protocol and SCP is the utility that accomplishes this task on Unix/Linux based systems. SCP encrypts the files given to it using the SSH protocol and copies it to the remote destination that the user specifies.

Getting Started

First of all you need to make sure that the remote system that you want to copy the data from has ssh installed and running. In my case, that’s the remote webserver hosted at Dreamhost.

Login to the remote system and issue the “pwd” command to see your current directory.

Note down the path that pwd prints. Now, from your local system issue the following scp command.

Replace:
username with your real username on the remote system,
Remote_IP with the IP Address/Name of the remote system,
Remote_directory with the output of the pwd command from above and
backup_directory with the name of the directory on your local system where you want to store the backups.

That’s it. This command will copy all the files and directories under the remote_directory to the backup_directory on your local system.

Backing Up in Windows

The above instructions will work well for Unix/Linux based machines, but what if you use Windows as your desktop and want to make a backup of your data from the remote machine to your windows desktop ?

Well, in that case you can just use the excellent utility, WinSCP which is a graphical SCP client for Windows

WinSCP gives you the familiar Explorer like interface with full support for drag and drop. Just browse through the directory you want to backup on the right pane and drag it over to the left pane and say GoodBye to text only unsecure FTP sessions.

How do you guys backup your remote servers ? Let us know in the comments.

Image Credit: Carbonnyc

Related Posts:

• How to Make Incremental Backups With Rsync
• An Easier Way to Generate A Public/Private SSH Key Via a GUI [Linux]
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Copy/Move

KDE is a typical graphical interface, and lends itself to dragging and dropping.  If you want to copy or move a file quickly, just drag it from one folder to another. With Dolphin, press F3 to bring up a split window, Control-N to open a whole new window, or Control-T to open a new tab. You can also drag files to any point in Dolphin’s breadcrumbs, to a folder on the Places panel, or to a Folderview on your desktop.You can also drag images from your web browser to a folder, if your browser supports it (both Konqueror and the latest Firefox do).

When you let go of the button after dragging, KDE gives you an options window: Move here, Copy here, Link here, Cancel.  You will also notice shortcut keys listed beside each.  If you hold the shortcut key while dragging a file, it will automatically choose the corresponding action.  “Link here” creates a symbollic link to your file, rather than copying or moving it.

Another way to copy or move is to use shortcut keys. Simply select the files you want to copy and press Control-C, or select the files you want to move and press Control-X. Then, paste them in the new location, just like pasting text in a word processor, by pressing Control-V.

Another feature that many found useful in KDE 3 is the “Copy to…” context menu.  To enable this:

1. Click “Settings” and “Configure Dolphin”
2. Click “General”
3. Click “Context Menu”
4. Check “Show ‘Copy To’ and ‘Move To’ commands.

Now, when you right click on a file, you will notice the “Copy To” option in the menu. Navigate through the menu to the place where you want to copy the file and click “copy here”. The same method will work for “Move To”.

Rename

There are three easy ways to rename a file:

1. Select the file and then click “File” and “Rename…”.
2. Right click on the file and click “Rename…”
3. Selet the file and press F2.

Batch Rename

There are times when you might need to rename multiple files at once. KDE makes it easy.

1. Select all the files you want to rename.
2. Press F2.
3. It will ask for a new name:  “New name # (# will be replaced by ascending numbers).
4. Leave the “#” and enter the prefix you want for each filename.

Archives

To create an archive in KDE:

1. Select the files you want to archive.
2. Right click and click “Compress”.
3. Select the type of archive:  ZIP, RAR, or  ZIP/TAR

By default, when you click on an archive, Dolphin will open it in Ark archive manager. In previous versions of KDE, you could navigate into the archive as if it were a folder. To enable this feature:

1. Click “Settings” and “Configure Dolphin”.
2. Click “Navigation”.
3. Check “Open archives as folder”.

To extract an archive:

Right click and click either “Extract Archive Here – Autodetect Subfolder, Extract Archive To, or Extract Archive Here.”

The “autodetect subfolder” will create a subfolder for the archive if one is not already present inside of it.  This will keep your archived files from mixing in with your other files.

As you can see, KDE makes it easy to manipulate your files, and there are many methods to get work done. If there are any methods that I missed, feel free to add them to the comments section.

Related Posts:

• KDE 4.6 Review: It’s Full Of Awesomeness
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We all know that Apple is one of the companies which (in)famous for their hobby to constantly release mouth-watering products. Those fanboy whose will strength is not that strong would always be tempted to constantly replace their belongings with the latest breeds.

The problem is, when you switch your machine(s), you also have to move your datas along. And as surprisingly as it seems, most people don’t know how to migrate their datas – properly – from the old Mac to the new.

Recently I got an opportunity to switch from my old iBook to a newer MacBook. And as one of those unfortunate soul who feel that they have to do everything on their own, I tried to find my way out of this problem. Here are my findings.

The easy way

The first time you start your Mac, you will have the opportunity to migrate your datas. Take it. This step and the help from the technical assistant at the Apple Store will make your life so much easier.

But just in case you missed the shot, you still can use the help from the Migration Assistant application (Applications->Utilities->Migration Assistant). Just open the app and follow the steps. Basically it will ask you where will you move your datas to/from (moving them to another Mac or getting them from another Mac or disk), then it will also ask how will you transfer your data, either through Firewire cable – which port is missing from the new MacBook, through wireless connection, or LAN.

If you have an external hard drive and Mac OS X 10.5 on both computer, the migration process will also be a snap. Just use the Time Machine (Applications->Time Machine) to back up the datas from the old machine to the external hard drive, and restore the datas using the new Mac.

The Manual Way

But if the easiest method failed, in my case because no matter what I do the old iBook won’t connect to the MacBook, there is still the manual way. Less comfortable, I know, but you have to do what you have to do.

So, beside the obvious – your documents and such (inside your Documents – Movies – Music – Pictures folder), you will want to move your Applications and Libraries folders because there lie all of your unseen datas – user accounts, all kinds of settings, and such. Be careful not to replace your newer apps with the olds as every Mac is preinstalled with loads of ready to use apps.

There are two Library folders. One is under your home folder (~/Library) and the other one is under your Hard Drive folder (/Library).

Please bear in mind that not every application and setting can be moved just by dragging and dropping. You’ll get more incompatibility if you move your datas between different version of Mac OS (Panther to Leopard for example). I found out that it would be better to use synchronization app to ‘back up’ your data to new location.

In my case, I also use external hard drive (a.k.a iPod classic) as a mediator since my old Mac kept its vow of silence and wouldn’t talk to the new. Maybe it’s jealous? :) So the process of moving my data looks like this: iBook –> external hard drive –> MacBook. It was not a smooth process and I only get about 70% right. But it still better than nothing.

Some applications need special attention and you have to actively looking for answer to your problem on the net. For example, you need to press T button when you open iPhoto for the first time in order to enable you to choose the photo library, or to use the ‘Consolidate Library’ command in iTunes for more or less the same goal. Read more about it here. You also have to authorize your new machine to be able to open your iTunes Music Store purchases.

Now my new Mac is mostly up and running (while still waiting for the updates download process to finish and trying to find out the way to fix some minor things). I hope this short rambling could help other unfortunate souls out there.

If you have other tips or stories you want to share about migrating your old Mac to new, use the comments below.

Related Posts:

• How To Schedule Backup And Synchronization Tasks In Windows
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While you can use your iPod as a portable hard disk, Apple does not allow you to transfer files to/from your iPhone. Although there are several apps that allows you to copy files, they are no free solutions. If you have jailbroken your iPhone, you can customize it to connect to the desktop and copy files to/from your iPhone.

For those who have not jailbreak their iPhone, here is a tutorial on jailbreaking your iPhone the easy way.

For Mac users:

In Mac, you can make use of AFP to access iPhone/iPod Touch via the Finder.

To do this, you have to first install Netatalk via Cydia.

On your jailbroken iPhone, go to Cydia. At the bottom, go to Sections. Navigate to Networking -> Netatalk. Click install on the top-right corner of the screen.

Once you have installed Netatalk, on your Mac desktop, open up Finder, you should find your iPhone entry on the left pane, under the ‘Shared‘ section. Click on it. You should see a blank screen with a ‘Connect As‘ on top of the screen.

Click on the ‘Connect As‘ and enter the following:

Name: mobile
Password: alpine

For some reason that you can’t find the entry in the Shared section, you can go to Go -> Connect to Server. Under the server address field, enter afp://your-iphone-ip-address. Mine is 192.168.0.102, so I entered afp://192.168.0.102. (You can find your iPhone IP address on Settings->Wi-Fi->Your network connection)

The Connecting to Server window should open up, and then ask for your user name and password.

Fill in the above login credential.

That’s it! You can now access the iPhone straight from Finder!

Most of your personal files will be in private/var/root/Library or private/var/root/Media. And of course installing applications is as easy as dragging the .app into your /Applications folder!

For Windows users:

iPhoneBrowser is a windows based file browser for your iPhone. It features drag and drop uploading to our phone, automatic and manual backups of files on your phone, previews of text and picture files and very cool icons.

Download SetupiPhoneBrowser.1.7.exe from http://code.google.com/p/iphonebrowser/downloads/list

Run the installer on your Windows XP (May not work well on Vista).

Upgrade your iTunes to 7.7.1 (it works on iTunes 7.7 as well).

Open the iPhoneBrowser and connect your iPhone to the computer via the USB cable. The iPhoneBrowser should detect the iPhone and show the file structure on its screen.

You can now drag and drop files to the iPhone.

For Linux users or any other platforms:

In any platforms, as long as you have a FTP program, you can easily transfer files to/from the iPhone via OpenSSH.

On you iPhone, go to Cydia. Tap on Section on the bottom pane and scroll to Networking->OpenSSH. Tap on the Install button to install it.

On your desktop, open up your FTP program (it doesn’t matter which one you use. For me, I used Filezilla because it is free and easy to use).

On Filezilla, go to File->Site Manager

On the left, click New Site

Rename the site to ‘iPhone‘

On the right, enter the following:

Host: Your iPhone IP address
Servertype: SFTP – SSH File Transfer Protocol
Logontype: Normal
User: root
Password: alpine

Click ‘Connect‘

You will be shown a confirmation message asking if you will accept key exchange / connection with the device with the iPhone’s address. You’ll need to click OK for it to connect.

Connected mode:

Once connected, you will see the familiar Explorer-like navigation structure. Simply drag and drop the files to and forth the iPhone.

Related Posts:

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