DigitalDilemma

A pet subject of mine.

Firstly - sit down and consider what you need to backup.

Tier 1 - unique data. Stuff you created that doesn’t exist elsewhere. Tier 2 - Stuff that would take a few days to repeat. Local configs, etc. Tier 3 - Stuff you can just download again. (Steam library, media etc)

Don’t backup Tier 3. I’m betting the size of data you need to back up shrinks a lot.

Secondly - automate it. If there’s anything manual, then you’ll eventually stop doing it. Automate, automate, automate - and throw in some manual or automated checks of the backups to verify they’re actually usable.

Thirdly - airgap it if you can, and if there’s much Tier 1 data. Offline disks. This gives you some protection against ransomware.

I wrote quite a long blog on the subject if you’re interested in more.

His interfering with European politics is despised over here - promoting far-right groups in Germany, France and the UK deliberately to destabilise our countries. The man is genuinely dangerous to all democracies, not just the US.

“Good” or “trust my life with”? The two can be mutually exclusive. If I was in the wrong, would a good person defend me?

I’ve met a few people with genuinely good morals in my life. They do exist and are almost incorruptible. Most people are flexible in that we can make justifications for almost anything.

You’re right, but sometimes you need someone to hold the other end of the rope when you lower yourself over a cliff.

“Surely you can’t be serious.”

he people making these decisions have no idea what life is like for a poor person.

It’s worse than that, they actively despise anyone who isn’t at least a millionaire.

They’ve been very blatant about that, and it reflects every single action they’ve taken since getting office.

I have a saying, “If it’s not DNS, then it’s Selinux”. It blocks stuff so frequently it’s a major time sink for us.

It is overly complex and difficult to understand, especially if you’re developing and deploying software that does not have correct pre-rolled policies. A regular job for me is to help developers solve this - which generally means running their service, seeing what Selinux blocks on, and then applying a fix. Repeat 2-8 times until every way Selinux is trying to access a file is explicitly allowed. And sometimes, even software that comes via official repos has buggy selinux policies that break things.

Fortunately, there are tools to help you. Install setroubleshooter amd when something doesn’t work, “grep seal /var/log/messages” and if it’s selinux causing the problem, you’ll find instructions showing you what went wrong and how to create an exception. I absolutely consider this tool essential when using any system with selinux enabled.

We’re an ingenious and motivated bunch (See all the Redhat attempts to stop clones, and lots of other examples), so yes, I think we’d absolutely work around the problem if it was to happen.

Point? I was replying about Mint and Ubuntu - what has Fedora got to do with them?

Well, all the distros being discussed are open source - it’s kind of a requirement when making a linux distro because the licences require it and you wouldn’t be able to make it closed source. (Unless there’s a huge shift in the law)

And being open source doesn’t necessarily prevent it falling under sanctions legislation. I have seen a linux distro being legally required to “take reasonable steps” to geo-block Russian access to its repos, and I’ve personally read disclaimers when installing linux that “This software is not allowed to be used in Russia”. (That distro is ‘owned’ by an organisation that was controlled by a single person, so it’s probably not comparable to Debian) We’re all technical people so we can all probably think of half a dozen ways around that, but it was still ordered by the US Government (even before the current government)

And you may be right in that it would be excempt. Debian isn’t owned by anyone, but its trademark is(Software in the Public Interest), and it feels possible that those who help distribute foss (by mirroring repos for example) may be restricted if they fall under US jurisdiction. I don’t know for certain - and unless someone here is a qualified lawyer specialising in software licences as well as how software rooted in the US relates to sanctions - we’re all probably guessing.

Three months ago any of this would have felt ridiculous - who would want to stop free software? But now? In this era of the ridiculous? I certainly feel unsure about predicting anything.

Mint and Ubuntu have Debian as an upstream, don’t they?

Debian is a US legal entity, so if it was required to sanction countries, it feels that software built with it would likely be restricted.

Most distros, not all, are based in, or run by, American legal entities.

Redhat, Rocky, Alma, Debian, etc - all legally American. This is a problem if the US requires sanctions against another country. All of those cannot legally supply products to Russia now, but in the future who’s to say what other countries the US will sanction? People are only now starting to realise that sanctions can be applied to software too, and many countries are entirely reliant upon US Software. (Seriously, do a quick audit - 90% of our tech company’s stack is US originated)

Alternatives: Suse (German) Ubuntu (UK, but based on Debian, so likely subject to supply chain restrictions).

That would increase the prices in the exporting countries. It’s not as if there’s such a huge surfeit that they’re being destroyed.

I know - it’s exhausting.

All social and news streams are absolutely being flooded by American politics right now. It’s mad and crazy stuff, but there’s only so much someone can take before it really starts to affect ones mental state.

And Lemmy partially started as a not-reddit, so I guess it’s normal that people come to vent.

So - positive stuff you can do!

Subscribe to more communities that do interest you. Leave less space for the other stuff to come in. You can also block communities from your main feed very easily if you’re being given stuff you don’t want from them.

Youtube (with adblock) is hardly affected (or if it is, I don’t see it). That brings lots of interesting and creative content.

Going out into the world if you’re able. Reconnecting with nature, and also being reminded that people, by and large, are usually nice to you if you’re nice to them.

And I’ve been picking up old games and playing them more. Escapism is not such a bad thing.

In unrelated news, hate is reduced across the world.

I was curious so I took a closer look at Sheltermanager and, honestly, I’m very impressed. They have a free demo on their site so you can show it off to people and see if there’s any interest.

And agree, self-hosting doesn’t sound like it would suit them or you, but you asked in an opensource thread and that is nearly always self-hosted. SM looks quite fairly priced for a hosted solution.

It’s a shame that doesn’t exist yet. I was in your position for a horse charity 25 years ago and couldn’t find anything either. I ended up writing them such a system, which grew and grew. Sadly it was owned by them and replaced a couple of years ago.

Is sheltermanager not suitable for self hosting? They claim to be open source