Open Tech Notes

Taking advantage of “post-commit”

If the SVN system could be a good backup system, then the "post-commit" script would be a hidden gem. After I have done the "weird" requirement from the programmers, It trigger me think about a nice backup system.

Writing a remote executable SSH command in post-commit script of the SVN system. After every commit, the system will automatically put all files to two different hosts. The two hosts can be located in two different cities, even two different countries.

Emails are “gone” after read?

One of my friend called me this morning.
He told me that he use Outlook express, after he read his email and it would disappear right away.
Sounds weird, eh.

Then I had him went through all the options tab, nothing was wrong.

Eventually, I found the problem is the filter, go view -> Current View, you will get what I mean.

No one cares if you can back up

I borrowed a book - Backup & Recovery by W.Curtis Preston - from library. As usual, I like read preface first so that I can get some background of the book.

What gave me a great impression was the author’s friend Joe Fitzpatrick said "No one cares if you can back up–only if you can recover."

Definitely, I truly believe it because it happened a lot of  around us. The company in the next door backed up their data by tape. What a coincidence! The tape they used have trouble to be reloaded while the hard drives in the server die. The reason is quite  simple — this tape has been used every night during the past three years.

post commit

Programmers require that they want see the effect right after they commit their codes and fortunately the SVN system provides such a great tool to do so.

Under /repository name/hooks/, there is a file called post-commit.tmpl, it is a template file that you can revise it to fit your needs.

Upon the requirements from programmers, I have implemented two post commit scripts:

1) the website and the SVN server  reside in the same machine
2) the website and the SVN server  reside in two different machine