Australasian Wader Studies Group - Shorebird study & conservation on the EAAF

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Science Friday Archives: Tracking Bird Migration

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Simplify, K.I.S.S., and C.Y.A.

(I apologize for the implied explitives in the title of this post, they were, however, necessary.)

Admittedly, a better title might have been "Simplify, Simplify, Simplify", but either way - my point is it's time for me to rein in some things in my life and "trim off the fat". I'm all over the place, so much so that a friend on Twitter made a comment about my far-reaching social networking appearance (not influence), and asked how I manage to maintain it all. The truth is, I don't maintain much of anything, anymore, or ever have. I need to close a few accounts, delete a ton of email addresses and K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid).

At one point in time I had the grand idea of creating an email address, for every account, everywhere on the internet (the unnecessary commas have been added for an intentional...momentary, but rather obnoxiously...long...pause). I chose to use the prefix "i83." to begin each address, for example: i83.facebook@gmail.com. This email, of course would be used as my login/contact email address for...you guessed it - Facebook! I also had, among others, i83.itunes, i83.redbox, etc. (You don't even want to know how many there actually are...nearly 2 dozen.)

I admit, I'm a little OCD and I'm having a hard time coming to grips with actually deleting, and discontinuing the use of these email addresses. It feels "clean", and it made sense to me when I did it, albeit I can't remember why, but I'd like to think it was a reasonable idea. It is, however difficult to remember whether or not I'm using a custom address, or stephen@bruington.com, which is my personal, 'everything else' email address.

In order to simplify I feel it's necessary to cut down on the number of accounts I have, but do not (for many reasons) maintain. I have written about, and even tried this before: http://blog.stephenbruington.com/tag/migration, but this time will be different, right? ;)

Here's the thing, I have accounts at places I know nothing about. Yep, little old me has probably already been to your website and established a username/password, etc. I've been on, logged into and/or used these, and many more: blip.fm, last.fm, facebook.com, twitter.com, bebo.com, orkut,com, linkedin.com, friendfeed.com, posterous.com (Haha! Thanks for hosting my blog.), wordpress.com, tumblr.com, livejournal.com, typepad.com, typingweb.com, plaxo.com, rememberthemilk.com, stikkit.com (which, by the way was the BEST ever note, memo, sticky message website...ever), gmail.com, hotmail.com, yahoo.com, flickr.com, photoshop.com, gmx.com, meebo.com, AIM, Skype, ICQ, myspace.com, and many, many others. Wow!

Do I really need all that stuff? No, I don't. I know I don't, but I think I have a problem...an addiction. I would like to keep the following:

Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, tumblr, posterous, flickr, Skype, Photoshop.com, and maybe a few others. I could write a book about all these sites and why I've used them, but I don't think anyone would read it. In fact, if you've made it this far you're either my wife (thank you Sweetheart), or crazy!

C.Y.A. - yes, the 'A' stands for what you think it stands for. I don't have a real good reason for using it as part of my title other than the fact that the internet is filled with identity-stealing goons and...quite frankly, I'm exposed. I need to CYA and get rid of a lot of these sites with my information. If you've made it *this far, please do not SPAM my email inbox. I realize I posted my email address to the world, but I don't believe anyone will use it to contact me anyway, so what the heck.

That's it. I need to consolidate and do away with a lot of useless accounts, and unused (by ME) websites. Thanks for reading, I'll let you know, at a later date what I decide to do, and how the cleanup is going, and/or turns out.

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The Connection between Art and Change

Climate Migration!

Art of a Changing World is a new exhibition at the Royal Academy, London.

30 leading international contemporary artists to examine the impact of global climate change on humanity through visual art, installation and sculpture....

Vertical Search: Social Interactivity

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Homeward bound: Caribbean returnees | The Guardian

via guardian.co.uk

EXCERPT:

The generation of Caribbeans who transformed Britain economically, politically and culturally after the war are nearing the end of their working lives... [M]any are now fulfilling a long-deferred dream to return to the countries from which they came.

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The Big Muslim Problem! - Says The New York Review of Books

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Long time no post..

It's been almost 2 years since we last saw a post on RSM. It's been a crazy ride; new jobs, new people, new stories. Hopefully hosting with Posterous will make things a bit easier, I've added a few contributors so we can get more content.

For the few of you that remember the old blog I'm working on porting the posts, I had a feeling that Mephisto Blog was doomed from the start and now it's refusing to give up my old data.

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Migrating Trac from SQLite to MySQL

A little while ago I was tasked with migrating about hundred Trac instances from SQLite to MySQL. Unfortunately SQLites schema definitions is not compatible with MySQL. So I had to write some scripts to handle it. After a little bit of experimenting everything worked perfectly.

The Strategy I employed was like this:

1. Make a dump of a default MySQL Trac db schema.
2. Make a dump of the Trac SQLite database
3. Remove db schema definitions from the SQLite dump
4. Concatenate the MySQL and SQLite dumps
5. Load data into MySQL
6. Edit Trac's database settings to use MySQL
7. Do a trac-admin upgrade

Here is the shell script I made:

MYSQL_USER=username
MYSQL_PSWD=password

SQLITECMD=sqlite3
TRACBASE=/path/to/tracreps


# loop through all trac instances in tracreps
for d in $( ls $TRACBASE )
do
if [ -d "$TRACBASE/$d" ]; then
echo $d
TRACNAME=$d

# create database in mysql
echo "creating database for $TRACNAME..."
mysqladmin --user $MYSQL_USER -p$MYSQL_PSWD create $TRACNAME

# dump sqlite db structure + data
echo "dumping data from sqlite..."
$SQLITECMD $TRACBASE/$TRACNAME/db/trac.db .dump > trac.sqlite.sql

# remove database definitions from dump using a custom python script
echo "cleaning database definition from dump..."
`./cleansql.py < trac.sqlite.sql > trac.sqlite.sql.dataonly`

# concatenate mysql database definitions and sqlite data
cat trac.mysql.sql trac.sqlite.sql.dataonly > trac.sql

echo "loading data into mysql..."
mysql --user $MYSQL_USER -p$MYSQL_PSWD --default_character_set utf8 $TRACNAME < trac.sql

# edit database connection string in trac.ini
sed -i "s?sqlite:db/trac.db?mysql://$MYSQL_USER:$MYSQL_PSWD@localhost:3306/$TRACNAME?" $TRACBASE/$TRACNAME/conf/trac.ini

echo "upgrading mysql database..."
trac-admin $TRACBASE/$TRACNAME upgrade --no-backup

To remove schema definitions from the sqlite dump and fix some incompatibilities I made this python script referenced above as cleansql.py:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import sys
import re

file = sys.stdin.read()
file = re.sub(r'(CREATE (TABLE|INDEX)[^;]*|COMMIT|BEGIN TRANSACTION);', '', file)
file = re.sub(r'INSERT INTO "([^"]+)"', lambda m: 'INSERT INTO `%s`' % m.groups(1), file)
# fix sql for reports
file = re.sub(r'CAST\((.+) AS int\)', lambda m: 'CAST(%s AS signed)' % m.groups(1), file)

sys.stdout.write(file)

And that's it. I hope this will benefit someone tasked with the same job.

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Steps to restore your contents and configurations to a new server farm

1. Restore MySite from Central Administration

2. Restore SSP from Central Administration

a. After a successful restore, go to your SSP site

b. Go to My Site settings

c. Point the Personal site provider to the restored MySite earlier

d. Correct all the other SSP settings and configurations to point to the new server farm

e. Test MySite and ensure everything including user profiles have been imported successfully into the new server farm

3. Repeat the following steps to restore all site collections:

a. Add a new content database in Central Admin->Application Management

b. Use the following command to restore site collection

i. stsadm –o restore –url http://yoursite/sitecollectioname -filename yourfilename.dat

c. add –overwrite switch at the end if there is an existing site collection

4. Install (deploy & activate) custom solutions on WFE servers

5. Install (deploy & activate) external libraries to Global Assembly Cache (GAC)

6. Restore the following specific folders and files in Web Front End servers from backup:

a. 12 Hive\TEMPLATE\CONTROLTEMPLATES

i. Custom web user control files (.ascx) are located here

b. 12 Hive\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033\STYLES

i. Custom style sheets (.css) are located here

c. 12 Hive\TEMPLATE\THEMES

i. Custom themes (CUSTOMBLUE) are located here

d. 12 Hive\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033\spthemes.xml

i. Custom themes folders added in (c.) shall be configured in this configuration file

7. Restore IIS metadata and configuration files from backup:

a. C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\portnumber

b. In each of the portnumber folder, the following need to be backed up

i. web.config file

ii. global.asax file

iii. _app_bin folder

iv. Bin folder

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Items to backup before moving your contents and configurations to a new server farm

1. Backup MySite from Central Administration
   • Ensure all running processes have been stopped especially the content crawler and other auto backup and restore jobs/timers
2. Backup SSP from Central Administration
   • Ensure all running processes have been stopped especially the content crawler and other auto backup and restore jobs/timers
3. Backup all site collections using the stsadm command
   • stsadm –o backup –url http://yoursite/sitecollectioname -filename yourfilename.dat
   • add –overwrite switch at the end if there is an existing backup file
4. Backup all the existing ‘12 Hive’ folder – C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\
5. Backup the following specific folders and files in Web Front End servers:
   • 12 Hive\TEMPLATE\CONTROLTEMPLATES
     • Custom web user control files (.ascx) are located here
   • 12 Hive\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033\STYLES
     • Custom style sheets (.css) are located here
   • 12 Hive\TEMPLATE\THEMES
     • Custom themes (i.e. CUSTOMBLUE) are located here
   • 12 Hive\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033\spthemes.xml
     • Custom themes folders added in (c.) shall be configured in this configuration file
6. Backup IIS metadata and configuration files
   • C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\portnumber
   • In each of the portnumber folder, the following need to be backed up
     • web.config file
     • global.asax file
     • _app_bin folder
     • bin folder

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