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1. How to clone a server using just rsync

   In the past I needed more space in the server and so i had to upgraded it to a more expensive option, without option of going back

   Now the basic server option is cheaper and is enough for me. Plus there were some black friday discounts :)

   So I decided to move the server with all my services to a cheaper option and save 75% of what i was spending with more or less the same features

   Unfortunately, this is not supported by default and theres no one button way to do it. Fortunately, this is very easy to do using linux!

   

   This is how i did it in 6 easy steps:

   Step 1

   • Reboot booh machines using a live image and have a working ssh server on the target server
   • Mount the server disk on both servers on /mnt

   Step 2

   • rsync -AHXavP --numeric-ids --exclude='/mnt/dev' --exclude='/mnt/proc' --exclude='/mnt/sys' /mnt/ root@ip.dest.server:/mnt/

   Step 3

   • ssh on the target server. Bind /proc /dev /sys to /mnt/ and chroot it
   • grub-install /dev/sdb && update-grub
   • ack ip.orig.server /etc/ and change it where appropiate
   • reboot

   Step 4

   • Change DNS

   Step 5

   • ????

   Step 6

   • Profit!

   Conclusion

   A couple of hours to do the whole thing including buying the new server and everything seems to be working as if nothing happened. Copying directly from server to server helped with the downtime too. Aint linux wonderful?
   

2. Virus, Qubes-OS and Debian

   

   This is the virus venn diagram. Its pretty accurate and many people, including people that gets along with technology, is oblivious to it. Voluntarily installing crap by installing random programs you just googled in your computer hardly counts as a virus

   Sometimes they overlap tho. What I call “trawling viruses”. Using some very old exploit that should hardly work on anybody and spamming it, you can still get lots of people that never update. In this case, you dont care about anything, you just try get a quick profit and you dont really care if you slow down the target machine

   But by and large, virus try to be as invisible as possible, do their bussiness and go undetected for as long as possible. If they can make an optimization to your system, like patching how they got in, they will

   Using debian is one way to protect yourself… but they still fall short because it still uses a very old authorization model

   

   Its no secret that the authorization model in computers is really old

   Qubes-os is a system that tries to mitigates that problem quite sucessfully. Qubes-os 4.0 rc1 has been released recently. Im currently testing it on my mediabox, and will probably use it in my main machine soon

   Holger gave a talk a few weeks ago named “Using qubes os from the pov of a debian developer”. In debconf fashion you can watch it online