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  • Critique My Backup and Storage Plan

    - by MetaHyperBolic
    My current storage (RAID-1 off of a hardware RAID card) and backup (a spare drive) solutions for my home network are inadequate. I have too much data scattered on various one-off drives. It is time to evolve. Backups seem simple enough, at least: lots of big drives. However, I am bewildered by the number of choices for small home storage. The Drobo S looks appealing. So does the ReadyNAS. I am not looking for bunches of shiny features, I'm mostly interested in reliability. I am not interested in building Yet Another PC to create a file server or doing something in the cloud, or whatever. I'm stupid, so I am keeping it simple. Requirements for Main Volume: Starting working space roughly 2TB, with options for growth up to 5TB RAID or something RAID-like with at least one parity drive eSATA II for speed during backups Ability to shut down gracefully when alerted of low power by a UPS Optional but Desirable: Will take 2TB drives now with options for the larger 3TB drives coming in 2010-2011 Optional but Desirable: : RAID-6 or something similar, with two parity drives Optional but Desirable: : Hot spare Ethernet connection not required, as the volume will be shared via the same machines which runs my home print server Backups: Backup performed via ROBOCOPY in mirror mode to an external hard drive via a eSATA II connection. Start with rotating between two external 2TB hard drives, will go up to six external 2TB drives. Start with a weekly backup, move to a bi-weekly backup as more drives are added. Move to 3TB drives as the size of my main volume increases. Backup drives will be stored on an off-site location. Hard drives: I plan on buying all of the same model, but different batches from different vendors. I found a "burn-in" utility with which I can pound away on the drives for a couple of weeks before adding them to the backup pool or the main volume. I estimate that I am looking at roughly $1,500 to start, once I start throwing in two TB drives for backup and four for storage. So, are there any obvious flaws in my plan? What have I overlooked? Any suggestions for the storage device for my main volume that fits my requirements? Or do I just keep it simple, 2 drives in RAID-1, then perform due diligence with my backups, accepting that I will have to buy a whole new unit when my data grows past 2TB?

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  • How Do You Stress-Test Your Hard Drives?

    - by MetaHyperBolic
    When looking for large new drives (= 1 TB) on newegg and the like, I note a number of reviews talking about drives being either D.O.A. or hitting the Click of Death (or even releasing the Magic Smoke) within a week or so of use. A portion of the reviews mention this phenomenon whether the drive in question is Western Digital or Hitachi or whatever. For those of you using Windows, what do you to: 1) Place a large initial stress on the drive to see if it can take it? For how long? 2) Test the drive afterwards (presumably with some sort of S.M.A.R.T. tool or others) to see if any negative changes have been noted? Note: This is one component of a larger plan for both high-availability and backups for my home data.

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  • How do I audit CD/DVD tray opening events in Windows 7?

    - by MetaHyperBolic
    Since installing Windows 7, the entire office has experienced random CD tray openings, sometimes while we are in the office, sometimes not. On my PC, I have two disc-reading devices, but only the top one ever slides open. I have found nothing in the event logs to that looks appropriate, even going to them right after I saw my own tray slide open all by itself. Although it's not hurting anything (that I can tell), I'd like to know what is going on. To that end, are there any useful ways to audit these events?

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  • Why Does .Hide()ing and .Show()ing Panels in wxPython Result in the Sizer Changing the Layout?

    - by MetaHyperBolic
    As referenced in my previous question, I am trying to make something slightly wizard-like in function. I have settled on a single frame with a sizer added to it. I build panels for each of the screens I would like users to see, add them to the frame's sizer, then switch between panels by .Hide()ing one panel, then calling a custom .ShowYourself() on the next panel. Obviously, I would like the buttons to remain in the same place as the user progresses through the process. I have linked together two panels in an infinite loop by their "Back" and "Next" buttons so you can see what is going on. The first panel looks great; tom10's code worked on that level, as it eschewed my initial, over-fancy attempt with borders flying every which way. And then the second panel seems to have shrunk down to the bare minimum. As we return to the first panel, the shrinkage has occurred here as well. Why does it look fine on the first panel, but not after I return there? Why is calling .Fit() necessary if I do not want a 10 pixel by 10 pixel wad of grey? And if it is necessary, why does .Fit() give inconsistent results? This infinite loop seems to characterize my experience with this: I fix the layout on a panel, only to find that switching ruins the layout for other panels. I fix that problem, by using sizer_h.Add(self.panel1, 0) instead of sizer_h.Add(self.panel1, 1, wx.EXPAND), and now my layouts are off again. So far, my "solution" is to add a mastersizer.SetMinSize((475, 592)) to each panel's master sizer (commented out in the code below). This is a cruddy solution because 1) I have had to find the numbers that work by trial and error (-5 pixels for the width, -28 pixels for the height). 2) I don't understand why the underlying issue still happens. What's the correct, non-ugly solution? Instead of adding all of the panels to the frame's sizer at once, should switching panels involve .Detach()ing that panel from the frame's sizer and then .Add()ing the next panel to the frame's sizer? Is there a .JustMakeThisFillThePanel() method hiding somewhere I have missed in both the wxWidgets and the wxPython documents online? I'm obviously missing something in my mental model of layout. Here's a TinyURL link, if I can't manage to embed the . Minimalist code pasted below. import wx import sys class My_App(wx.App): def OnInit(self): self.frame = My_Frame(None) self.frame.Show() self.SetTopWindow(self.frame) return True def OnExit(self): print 'Dying ...' class My_Frame(wx.Frame): def __init__(self, image, parent=None,id=-1, title='Generic Title', pos=wx.DefaultPosition, style=wx.CAPTION | wx.STAY_ON_TOP): size = (480, 620) wx.Frame.__init__(self, parent, id, 'Program Title', pos, size, style) sizer_h = wx.BoxSizer(wx.HORIZONTAL) self.panel0 = User_Interaction0(self) sizer_h.Add(self.panel0, 1, wx.EXPAND) self.panel1 = User_Interaction1(self) sizer_h.Add(self.panel1, 1, wx.EXPAND) self.SetSizer(sizer_h) self.panel0.ShowYourself() def ShutDown(self): self.Destroy() class User_Interaction0(wx.Panel): def __init__(self, parent, id=-1): wx.Panel.__init__(self, parent, id) # master sizer for the whole panel mastersizer = wx.BoxSizer(wx.VERTICAL) #mastersizer.SetMinSize((475, 592)) mastersizer.AddSpacer(15) # build the top row txtHeader = wx.StaticText(self, -1, 'Welcome to This Boring\nProgram', (0, 0)) font = wx.Font(16, wx.DEFAULT, wx.NORMAL, wx.BOLD) txtHeader.SetFont(font) txtOutOf = wx.StaticText(self, -1, '1 out of 7', (0, 0)) rowtopsizer = wx.BoxSizer(wx.HORIZONTAL) rowtopsizer.Add(txtHeader, 3, wx.ALIGN_LEFT) rowtopsizer.Add((0,0), 1) rowtopsizer.Add(txtOutOf, 0, wx.ALIGN_RIGHT) mastersizer.Add(rowtopsizer, 0, flag=wx.EXPAND | wx.LEFT | wx.RIGHT, border=15) # build the middle row text = 'PANEL 0\n\n' text = text + 'This could be a giant blob of explanatory text.\n' txtBasic = wx.StaticText(self, -1, text) font = wx.Font(11, wx.DEFAULT, wx.NORMAL, wx.NORMAL) txtBasic.SetFont(font) mastersizer.Add(txtBasic, 1, flag=wx.EXPAND | wx.LEFT | wx.RIGHT, border=15) # build the bottom row btnBack = wx.Button(self, -1, 'Back') self.Bind(wx.EVT_BUTTON, self.OnBack, id=btnBack.GetId()) btnNext = wx.Button(self, -1, 'Next') self.Bind(wx.EVT_BUTTON, self.OnNext, id=btnNext.GetId()) btnCancelExit = wx.Button(self, -1, 'Cancel and Exit') self.Bind(wx.EVT_BUTTON, self.OnCancelAndExit, id=btnCancelExit.GetId()) rowbottomsizer = wx.BoxSizer(wx.HORIZONTAL) rowbottomsizer.Add(btnBack, 0, wx.ALIGN_LEFT) rowbottomsizer.AddSpacer(5) rowbottomsizer.Add(btnNext, 0) rowbottomsizer.AddSpacer(5) rowbottomsizer.AddStretchSpacer(1) rowbottomsizer.Add(btnCancelExit, 0, wx.ALIGN_RIGHT) mastersizer.Add(rowbottomsizer, flag=wx.EXPAND | wx.LEFT | wx.RIGHT, border=15) # finish master sizer mastersizer.AddSpacer(15) self.SetSizer(mastersizer) self.Raise() self.SetPosition((0,0)) self.Fit() self.Hide() def ShowYourself(self): self.Raise() self.SetPosition((0,0)) self.Fit() self.Show() def OnBack(self, event): self.Hide() self.GetParent().panel1.ShowYourself() def OnNext(self, event): self.Hide() self.GetParent().panel1.ShowYourself() def OnCancelAndExit(self, event): self.GetParent().ShutDown() class User_Interaction1(wx.Panel): def __init__(self, parent, id=-1): wx.Panel.__init__(self, parent, id) # master sizer for the whole panel mastersizer = wx.BoxSizer(wx.VERTICAL) #mastersizer.SetMinSize((475, 592)) mastersizer.AddSpacer(15) # build the top row txtHeader = wx.StaticText(self, -1, 'Read about This Boring\nProgram', (0, 0)) font = wx.Font(16, wx.DEFAULT, wx.NORMAL, wx.BOLD) txtHeader.SetFont(font) txtOutOf = wx.StaticText(self, -1, '2 out of 7', (0, 0)) rowtopsizer = wx.BoxSizer(wx.HORIZONTAL) rowtopsizer.Add(txtHeader, 3, wx.ALIGN_LEFT) rowtopsizer.Add((0,0), 1) rowtopsizer.Add(txtOutOf, 0, wx.ALIGN_RIGHT) mastersizer.Add(rowtopsizer, 0, flag=wx.EXPAND | wx.LEFT | wx.RIGHT, border=15) # build the middle row text = 'PANEL 1\n\n' text = text + 'This could be a giant blob of boring text.\n' txtBasic = wx.StaticText(self, -1, text) font = wx.Font(11, wx.DEFAULT, wx.NORMAL, wx.NORMAL) txtBasic.SetFont(font) mastersizer.Add(txtBasic, 1, flag=wx.EXPAND | wx.LEFT | wx.RIGHT, border=15) # build the bottom row btnBack = wx.Button(self, -1, 'Back') self.Bind(wx.EVT_BUTTON, self.OnBack, id=btnBack.GetId()) btnNext = wx.Button(self, -1, 'Next') self.Bind(wx.EVT_BUTTON, self.OnNext, id=btnNext.GetId()) btnCancelExit = wx.Button(self, -1, 'Cancel and Exit') self.Bind(wx.EVT_BUTTON, self.OnCancelAndExit, id=btnCancelExit.GetId()) rowbottomsizer = wx.BoxSizer(wx.HORIZONTAL) rowbottomsizer.Add(btnBack, 0, wx.ALIGN_LEFT) rowbottomsizer.AddSpacer(5) rowbottomsizer.Add(btnNext, 0) rowbottomsizer.AddSpacer(5) rowbottomsizer.AddStretchSpacer(1) rowbottomsizer.Add(btnCancelExit, 0, wx.ALIGN_RIGHT) mastersizer.Add(rowbottomsizer, flag=wx.EXPAND | wx.LEFT | wx.RIGHT, border=15) # finish master sizer mastersizer.AddSpacer(15) self.SetSizer(mastersizer) self.Raise() self.SetPosition((0,0)) self.Fit() self.Hide() def ShowYourself(self): self.Raise() self.SetPosition((0,0)) self.Fit() self.Show() def OnBack(self, event): self.Hide() self.GetParent().panel0.ShowYourself() def OnNext(self, event): self.Hide() self.GetParent().panel0.ShowYourself() def OnCancelAndExit(self, event): self.GetParent().ShutDown() def main(): app = My_App(redirect = False) app.MainLoop() if __name__ == '__main__': main()

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  • If Possible, How Can One Set Either a Background Color on Cells within a Sizer or Gridlines for the

    - by MetaHyperBolic
    I am flailing about with wxWidgets, in particular, the wx.Sizer in wxPython. I have read the documents, I have a copy of wXPython in Action before me, and have set aside the problem to work on other things a better mental model of sizers hopefully gestated within my skull. None of this has worked. I am not grokking, or even getting to the point where I can bang about usefully, how sizers work. In HTML, I could at least set a background color on some div or td, or call forth borders so I could see how things are laid out. Here, I have a grey expanse and no idea which of the nested static box sizers from which it originates. I am giving static box sizers after making a mess out of the grid bag sizers. Either alternative would let me at least get a handle on how these work.

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  • Appropriate wx.Sizer(s) for the job?

    - by MetaHyperBolic
    I have a space in which I would like certain elements (represented here by A, B, D, and G) to each be in its own "corner" of the design. The corners ought to line up as if each of the four elements was repelling the other; a rectangle. This is to be contained within an unresizable panel. I will have several similar panels and want to keep the location of the elements as identical as possible. (I needed something a little more complex than a wx.Wizard, but with the same general idea.) AAAAAAAAAA BB CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC CCCCCCCCCCCCCC CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC DDD EEE FFF GGG A represents a text in a large font. B represents a numeric progress meter (e.g. "1 of 7") in a small font. C represents a large block of text. D, E, F, and G are buttons. The G button is separated from others for functionality. I have attempted nested wx.BoxSizers (horizontal boxes inside of one vertical box) without luck. My first problem with wx.BoxSizer is that the .SetMinSize on my last row has not been honored. The second problem is that I have no idea how to make the G button "take up space" without growing comically large, or how I can jam it up against the right edge and bottom edge. I have tried to use a wx.GridBagSizer, but ran into entirely different issues. After plowing through the various online tutorials and wxPython in Action, I'm a little frustrated. The relevant forums appear to see activity once every two weeks. "Playing around with it" has gotten me nowhere; I feel as if I am trying to smooth out a hump in ill-laid carpet.

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  • How Can I Programmatically Build a Multi-Page TIFF out of Many Single Page TIFFs, Using Python?

    - by MetaHyperBolic
    I've found, via Google, numerous people asking the same question, but no solutions. The Python Image Library (PIL) has tools for stepping through an already existing multi-page TIFF, but nothing about creating them. Libraries would hopefully be available on Windows, for Python 2.6. If there's some freeware out there which will do the trick, I wouldn't mind seeing it, but I was hoping I could accomplish this in Python.

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  • Prompting for authentication from a wxPython program and passing it along to IIS?

    - by MetaHyperBolic
    I have a client (written in Python, with a wxPython front end in dead-simple wizard style) which communicates a website running IIS. A python script receives requests and does the usual client-server dance. I would have written this as a browser application, but for the requirement that certain things happen on the local PC that the web can't help with (file manipulation, interfacing with certain USB hardware, etc.) Right now, I am simply using the logon credentials, compounded as a string from os.environ['USERDOMAIN'] and os.environ['USERNAME'], to pass along to the server, which connects to Active Directory and enumerates the members of the group, looking for those logon credentials. It's an ugly hack, but it works. Obviously, I could make people log out of the generic helper accounts and log back into Windows using specific accounts. However, I wondered how feasible it would be to provide some kind of logon prompt wherein the user can type in a name and password, then some kind of authorization token could be passed on to IIS. This seems like something I would not want to do myself, given that amateurs almost always make huge security mistakes. Now you can see why I am wishing this was purely web-based. What's a good way to handle this?

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  • Please Describe Your Struggles with Minimizing Use of Global Variables

    - by MetaHyperBolic
    Most of the programs I write are relatively flowchartable processes, with a defined start and hoped-for end. The problems themselves can be complex but do not readily lean towards central use of objects and event-driven programming. Often, I am simply churning through great varied batches of text data to produce different text data. Only occasionally do I need to create a class: As an example, to track warnings, errors, and debugging message, I created a class (Problems) with one instantiation (myErr), which I believe to be an example of the Singleton design pattern. As a further factor, my colleagues are more old school (procedural) than I and are unacquainted with object-oriented programming, so I am loath to create things they could not puzzle through. And yet I hear, again and again, how even the Singleton design pattern is really an anti-pattern and ought to be avoided because Global Variables Are Bad. Minor functions need few arguments passed to them and have no need to know of configuration (unchanging) or program state (changing) -- I agree. However, the functions in the middle of the chain, which primarily control program flow, have a need for a large number of configuration variables and some program state variables. I believe passing a dozen or more arguments along to a function is a "solution," but hardly an attractive one. I could, of course, cram variables into a single hash/dict/associative array, but that seems like cheating. For instance, connecting to the Active Directory to make a new account, I need such configuration variables as an administrative username, password, a target OU, some default groups, a domain, etc. I would have to pass those arguments down through a variety of functions which would not even use them, merely shuffle them off down through a chain which would eventually lead to the function that actually needs them. I would at least declare the configuration variables to be constant, to protect them, but my language of choice these days (Python) provides no simple manner to do this, though recipes do exist as workarounds. Numerous Stack Overflow questions have hit on the why? of the badness and the requisite shunning, but do not often mention tips on living with this quasi-religious restriction. How have you resolved, or at least made peace with, the issue of global variables and program state? Where have you made compromises? What have your tricks been, aside from shoving around flocks of arguments to functions?

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  • How do I introspect on a SQL Server?

    - by MetaHyperBolic
    I have a server with a vendor application which is heavily database-reliant. I need to make some minor changes to the data in a few tables in the database in an automated fashion. Just INSERTs and UPDATEs, nothing fancy. Vendors being vendors, I can never be quite sure when they change the schema of a database during upgrade. To that end, how do I ask the SQL server, in some scriptable fashion, "Hey, does this table still exist? Yeah, cool, okay, but does it have this column? What's the data type and size on that? Is it nullable? Could you give me a list of tables? In this table, could you give me a list of columns? Any primary keys there?" I do not need to do this for the whole schema, only part of it, just a quick check of the database before I launch into things. We have Microsoft SQL Server 2005 on it currently, but it might easily move to Microsoft SQL Server 2008. I am probably not using the correct terminology when searching. I do know that ORM is not only too much overhead for this sort of thing, but also that I have no chance of pitching it to my coworkers.

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