Have you heard the one about 3-2-1 backups? It’s the idea that you should have 3 copies of your files stored on 2 different mediums and one of the copies should be off-site. I’m not quite there yet, but I’m a little closer now. I have been using rsync, a utility for making incremental backups, for awhile, but I’ve always run the script I created for it manually. I typically did this every three to four weeks, you know when I thought about it. Yesterday I finally created a cron job to automate this process, and it is so much nicer. Read on to learn for yourself how to automate your backups on Linux. Part 1 of this article covers rsync. Part 1a covers include and exclude rules for rsync, and Part 2 covers cron.

I recently found myself with two drives, an SSD and an HDD to devote to a single Linux install. This led to much deliberation regarding drive partitioning schemes. The simple solution would have been to put a /home/ partition on the HDD. However, I didn’t want my config files, scripts, documents, games, etc. on the slower HDD. I wanted to relegate the HDD to storing files that didn’t necessarily need the speed. I decided my pictures, videos, music and VMs could all live on the HDD. I partitioned the HDD, created folders with the relevant names, and put my files on the drive.

I had a problem though. When I opened the Pictures folder in my home directory, it was empty. Even though my pictures, etc. were on a separate drive from my home folder, I still wanted my pictures, etc. to show up there in Nautilus. Read on to learn how you too can link folders in your home directory to another location.

In a recent post, I discussed setting up an OpenVPN server on a Raspberry Pi. I relied on a nice tutorial from readwrite that you can find here. However, I found a discrepancy with the guide pertaining to its discussion of firewalls. The tutorial states that Raspbian has a firewall enabled by default. While iptables is certainly present by default (it’s part of the kernel), and it is often the basis for a very powerful firewall, it is not configured to be a firewall by default. Read on to learn how to enable a firewall on your Internet-facing Pi (including OpenVPN servers)!