It is still a time of me getting familiar with my shiny new little toy. Even it works very well with us both and after a few days I feel more and more familiar with all there is still this feeling left not being finally familiar with all.

But within just a few days I also have found nice and neat new stuff I really started to enjoy and wouldn’t like to miss anymore. And also all  those tips of my friend were great and made quit a big difference for sure getting me a better start.

Today I found LittleSnitch an inexpensive little helper which really helps to improve your security in my eyes. And I also have spoken about SuperDuper before which has archive to become my most liked backup solution now.

By the way speaking about SuperDuper … curious as I am I have for sure to test and play with all. Can you imagine how disappointed I was finding this SuperDuper backup-ed external usb2.0 disk not able to boot? Searching their forum didn’t bring any clue for me what might have gone wrong.

Thinking about I decided to follow an idea I had installing a new clean OS on that external disk which I had anyway planned to do getting familiar with that procedure at all. After installing the OS and verifying it would boot, I started SuperDuper again switching to "smart" backup and was surprised everything now working fine.  Thats quit a relief … now I’m able to fix it again whenever needed.

…. everyone could do!!

It started very harmless with me strolling into town on saturday. And how could it be different than with me ending up within a bigger electronic store looking for new things (better said toys) there.

I ended up in from of a bigger stack of  externel USB2.0 disks offered for an extreme good price. Seeing then and having my lovely little NSLU2 server in mind I bought one to have a second backup disk for it.

At that point it might be worth to mention that it curiously started with me I having the idea to go for some always running and accessible NAS backup device for my home lan. Playing with a few different devices, I finally found out about the NSLU2 as the absolute best buy in my eyes and since then device has quickly emerged to the central file and web server (even accessible from outside) within my lan …. Just without backup!!

But now!! And with the deep intention to create the urgent needed backup immediately …. Can you imagine my face when I discovered that my loved little server refuses to reboot after I had connected the 2nd drive to it???

Thanks god the answer was not far away …. a bug within the flash! Devices get randomly assigned their drive assigments e.q. /dev/sda and /dev/sdb in the order of their ready signal is indicated after boot …. How stupid!!

And the answer it?!! “Filesystem Labels” and/or “UUID”  …..  And now I have to update the flash image myself!

Troubleshooting Debian on the NSLU2
How to mount disks by label
How to change the kernel command line used by Debian / NSLU2
How to build a new Debian/NSLU2 image

ps: Thanks god for all these little toys!!