Re: [FRIAM] Desktop & Laptop Coordination
Owen, I have given up on desktops at work and at home. First, I've used a succession of laptops as my only computer for about five years at work. I've had a desktop available for most of that time, but never had the simultaneous time and motivation to configure the desktop and get it to sync nicely with the laptop. My goal was to have one set of data that is my work that would be available to both desktop and laptop. Of course, my requirements are different from yours - I travel a lot and need my "stuff" to be with me and I frequently use my laptop as an "attack" system when doing live discovery or assessment. I just upgraded my old Mac dual-G4 desktop (which died) to a 17" MacBook. I will use that as my primary system and my old 17" G4 as my secondary and not have a desktop. At home, I still have a desktop, but I haven't powered it up in months. I have a monster desktop replacement laptop that I use instead. I would have to upgrade the motherboard, GPU, and disk on the old desktop to get it up to the performance level of the laptop. I find that as I get older, I enjoy fiddling with hardware and even software less and less. I want the computers to work so that I can get on with my work (or fun). -- Ray Parks [EMAIL PROTECTED] IDART Project Lead Voice:505-844-4024 IORTA DepartmentMobile:505-238-9359 http://www.sandia.gov/scada Fax:505-844-9641 http://www.sandia.gov/idart Pager:800-690-5288 FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Desktop & Laptop Coordination
I've got three machines that I use regularly for work: a laptop and a desktop in the office and a desktop at home. I don't need to worry about synching my email, contacts or calendar as I use Gmail for all those; I keep the projects I'm working on synched up by using MS's SyncToy and an external 60GB drive I carry around with me (hardly weighs anything - it gets its power off the USB port). I also use a fourth machine (tiny & old laptop) as a dumb terminal onto my desktop via MS Remote Desktop. It means I can hang out on the deck and still monitor any processor intensive runs I've got going. R FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Desktop & Laptop Coordination
Here's a usability point I forgot about. I much prefer writing code on the desktop than on the laptop because I can rotate the screen from landscape to portrait. My code tends to be long rather than wide, so I get to see more of it at once this way. R FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Desktop & Laptop Coordination
On Tuesday 26 September 2006 13:20, Owen Densmore wrote: > So the question comes up: for FRIAMers having both a laptop and a > desktop: what is your strategy for keeping the two in synch? Or do > you bother -- instead doing some sorts of things on the desktop, and > other stuff on the desktop, with a small intersection. I use rsync for things I want on both - I also ssh to my workstation frequently for access to stuff I don't really need on my lappy, but need access to. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Desktop & Laptop Coordination
I just keep stuff I need on an external 80GB WD passport usb drive, which works with 2 desktops and one laptop. And keep all email and calendar on gmail and google calendar. Sometimes I end up with files on the laptop when I need it in the office, but most of the time it works out fine. No elaborate syncing though. On 9/26/06, Tim Densmore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Tuesday 26 September 2006 13:20, Owen Densmore wrote: > > So the question comes up: for FRIAMers having both a laptop and a > > desktop: what is your strategy for keeping the two in synch? Or do > > you bother -- instead doing some sorts of things on the desktop, and > > other stuff on the desktop, with a small intersection. > > I use rsync for things I want on both - I also ssh to my workstation > frequently for access to stuff I don't really need on my lappy, but need > access to. > > > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Desktop & Laptop Coordination
> > On Tuesday 26 September 2006 13:20, Owen Densmore wrote: > >> > So the question comes up: for FRIAMers having both a laptop and a >> > desktop: what is your strategy for keeping the two in synch? Or do >> > you bother -- instead doing some sorts of things on the desktop, and >> > other stuff on the desktop, with a small intersection. >> I put code and technical documents in Subversion, and sync via that (via a WebDAV/Subversion apache module). Unlike CVS, Subversion handles renaming of modules without much hassle, and handles binaries. Btw, a few years ago I played around with the Inter-Mezzo filesystem (http://www.inter-mezzo.org). Idea there is to have the kernel keep a transaction record of all reads and writes against a file(system) and store them in a log. Resyncing is then just a matter of replaying the transactions to the target machine (e.g. the desktop). It worked pretty well, but unfortunately it isn't maintained much these days. The developers moved on to work on the Lustre distributed file system. Marcus FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Desktop & Laptop Coordination
Tim's post prompted me to see if there was a version of rsync for windows. The two options seem to be:(1) install cygwin - rsync comes as part of the package. (I'm not a great fan of cygwin so I decided against this approach) (2) install microsoft's resource kit tools for MS Server 2003 (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9d467a69-57ff-4ae7-96ee-b18c4790cffd&displaylang=en ). They include robocopy which isn't a clone of rsync but has pretty good functionality. It seems to have much tighter control of exactly what is getting synchronized than SyncToy does.R On 9/26/06, Tim Densmore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Tuesday 26 September 2006 13:20, Owen Densmore wrote:> So the question comes up: for FRIAMers having both a laptop and a> desktop: what is your strategy for keeping the two in synch? Or do> you bother -- instead doing some sorts of things on the desktop, and > other stuff on the desktop, with a small intersection.I use rsync for things I want on both - I also ssh to my workstationfrequently for access to stuff I don't really need on my lappy, but needaccess to. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Desktop & Laptop Coordination
unison has always been good to me when synchronizing between Windows and Linux, http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/, and I see it's available for OSX, too. But the problem is always getting a bit tired of waiting for the synchronization to complete when I'm in a hurry, so I don't do it. I'm using rsync onto a usb laptop drive for some purposes these days, but even then the time involved is a bit tiresome, and the possibility of getting mis-synchronized (ie, overwriting a newer file by accident) is present. -- rec --On 9/27/06, Robert Holmes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Tim's post prompted me to see if there was a version of rsync for windows. The two options seem to be:(1) install cygwin - rsync comes as part of the package. (I'm not a great fan of cygwin so I decided against this approach) (2) install microsoft's resource kit tools for MS Server 2003 ( http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9d467a69-57ff-4ae7-96ee-b18c4790cffd&displaylang=en ). They include robocopy which isn't a clone of rsync but has pretty good functionality. It seems to have much tighter control of exactly what is getting synchronized than SyncToy does.R On 9/26/06, Tim Densmore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Tuesday 26 September 2006 13:20, Owen Densmore wrote:> So the question comes up: for FRIAMers having both a laptop and a> desktop: what is your strategy for keeping the two in synch? Or do> you bother -- instead doing some sorts of things on the desktop, and > other stuff on the desktop, with a small intersection.I use rsync for things I want on both - I also ssh to my workstationfrequently for access to stuff I don't really need on my lappy, but needaccess to. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listservMeets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's Collegelectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Desktop & Laptop Coordination
Robert Holmes wrote: > Here's a usability point I forgot about. I much prefer writing code on > the desktop than on the laptop because I can rotate the screen from > landscape to portrait. My code tends to be long rather than wide, so I > get to see more of it at once this way. That made me think about how different uses require different user interfaces (and I don't mean GUI). I use a wide screen because I frequently have more than one app I'm using at a time (I can usually multi-track on three tasks at once). A co-worker uses three 20" LCDs instead of two 24" not because of cost but because when he looks at the center of his virtual screen he doesn't want to look at the bezels of two monitors. One application where it is nice to have multiple screens going is reverse engineering - you can have one that shows the state of the virtual network and servers, one that shows the software under RE, and another that shows the IDA Pro view and such stuff. Which brings me to one of the pieces of wisdom I have picked up in 23 years of buying and using personal computers - Put your money and interest into the parts that change the form of information. Keyboard, mouse, graphics card/monitor, disks, and, nowadays, USB drives and CD/DVD drives will be the most important to you. Get the best you can in those components and then use up the rest of your budget on the motherboard, processor, and memory. Sometimes I even put the memory in the list of primary importance. -- Ray Parks [EMAIL PROTECTED] IDART Project Lead Voice:505-844-4024 IORTA DepartmentMobile:505-238-9359 http://www.sandia.gov/scada Fax:505-844-9641 http://www.sandia.gov/idart Pager:800-690-5288 FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Desktop & Laptop Coordination
Generally I just put everything on a server manually, although what I'd like would be a nonlocal filesystem I could mount from either machine. -- Giles Bowkett http://www.gilesgoatboy.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Desktop & Laptop Coordination
Roger Critchlow wrote: > unison has always been good to me when synchronizing between Windows and > Linux, http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/, and I see it's > available for OSX, too. But the problem is always getting a bit tired > of waiting for the synchronization to complete when I'm in a hurry, so I > don't do it. I'm using rsync onto a usb laptop drive for some purposes > these days, but even then the time involved is a bit tiresome, and the > possibility of getting mis-synchronized (ie, overwriting a newer file by > accident) is present. I tried various synchronization schemes between my Powerbook and both Linux and Windows boxen. My goal was to have a USB drive I could plug into any of my computers and start working. I have never achieved that goal. One thing I found irritating was OS X', apparently deliberate, inability to write correctly to other file systems. NTFS supports file creation, modification, POSIX change, and POSIX access date/time stamps, but every time I copied my home directory from OS X to an NTFS removable drive, all files had that date/time for all dates. That made it impossible to use my Lacie drive as my home directory on all systems. As for Linux, OS X refused to interact with anything Linux without 3rd party help. I didn't have time to make it work. I just checked and the Apple site has no information through search under support on linux file systems or Ext3. The whole area of synchronizing my work to make it available on multiple systems is one in which OS X has failed me. -- Ray Parks [EMAIL PROTECTED] IDART Project Lead Voice:505-844-4024 IORTA DepartmentMobile:505-238-9359 http://www.sandia.gov/scada Fax:505-844-9641 http://www.sandia.gov/idart Pager:800-690-5288 FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
