[Chicago] Just sharing with everyone in the group.

Wed Mar 4 05:41:24 CET 2015

Hi Douglas,

Again, not sure how much off-topic chatter is appreciated here so I'll keep
it short...

For a low-maintenance recovery solution on linux, I think most people would
advise installing  /home on a separate partition. Then in theory you just
reinstall the OS while leaving your /home partition alone. You might run
into minor quirks and of course you'd have to get all your packages set up
again.

If you want all the snazzy file-level history stuff you'd need to look at a
file system like ZFS.

And regardless of your setup, a scheduled `rsync` script to back up /home
is a pretty foolproof route. You could even use python to give this script
a fancy GUI (bingo! On-topic ;> )

If you erased your disk and *really* need to recover files from it you can
do some tricks with `dd`, but only if you haven't overwritten it yet, which
it sounds like you did.

—Sam

On Tue, Mar 3, 2015 at 9:05 PM, Micheal Beatty <mike at mwbeatty.org> wrote:

> Hi Douglas,
> A couple of things re: Kali Linux.
> 1. It’s really intended to be used for security auditing and penetration
> testing environments and not as an everyday OS on your production machine.
> Most important reason is because the default user is a root account.
> 2. The reason you couldn’t save anything is that Kali Linux is a Live ISO
> and the changes you make only occur in RAM and are not stored to physical
> media. It is possible to use the ISO to create a bootable USB or as you
> found out, install it in a partition on your hard drive. Your best option
> though is to install it in a virtual machine like VMWare or VirtualBox.
>
> If you have any further questions about Kali Linux I’d be happy to answer
> them off-list.
>
>
> Micheal Beatty
> Sent with Airmail
>
> On March 3, 2015 at 20:37:20, Lewit, Douglas (d-lewit at neiu.edu) wrote:
>
>      Oh I know, I found a "hammer" that works and now I want to strike
> every nail with it.  But I'm semi-new to Python and the whole
> object-oriented thing is kind of interesting.  Also, it's amazing how fast
> the linked list implementation works compared to using recursion for the
> Fibonacci series.  With recursion it takes FOREVER, especially if n is some
> integer larger than let's say 40 or something like that.
>
> On a totally different subject.... does anyone in the group know anything
> about a Kali Linux installation???  PLEASE HELP!  Long story, I have (or
> had) Ubuntu on my HP PC.  (I have three laptops actually, two Macs and one
> PC.)  Okay, the Ubuntu installation is pretty painless and whoever wrote
> the install program did an awesome job.  Someone in my data structures
> class showed me Kali Linux and my first reaction was, WOW!!!!  So I thought
> I would get clever and do a dual boot, Ubuntu and Kali together on the same
> hard drive.  Well I managed to download and configure (after much research
> via Google) a thumb drive with .iso on it.  The problem is that if you boot
> off the thumb drive, sure Kali Linux works just great, but your changes
> won't be saved.  You can change the date, time, create files, change the
> font size in Terminal, etc, etc, but then when shut down the computer and
> boot back into a Live session of Kali Linux all your changes and files are
> gone.... so why bother?  So.... I tried a Graphical Install of Kali Linux
> after shrinking my partition with Ubuntu on it, right?  All was fine and
> copacetic, no problems.  I used GParted and the partitions were created,
> okay--lovely.  THEN THINGS GOT REALLY F--KED up when I did the Graphical
> Installation of Kali.  (No doubt the Hindu goddess Kali put a curse on me
> or my computer!!!!)  The installer prompted me for all this technical
> information about my network in order to configure the apt command.  (In
> Linux you can use "apt" to install updates and programs from the nearest
> repository or "mirror".)  I mean.... I know the name and password for my
> wireless setup, but I don't have all this other techie info about my
> "network"!  So the Installer warned me that I would have a minimal
> installation.  Okay, fine.  So then when I booted up to Kali, it would not
> accept my username and password!!!!  So I said screw it, I'll just erase
> the partition that contains Kali.... A VERY DUMB THING TO DO!  Because the
> Kali Linux partition contained Grub!!!!!  So..... I screwed myself
> royally.  I just decided to insert the Ubuntu CD and do a fresh install of
> Ubuntu--which of course means that all my files on the previous install got
> erased!  (Yes, I have a backup on an external hard drive, but for some
> reason Ubuntu's default backup program isn't reading the backup!  Very
> strange since the backup is made up entirely of .tar.gz files, which should
> be very easy for Ubuntu to read!!!!!)
>
> Totally frustrated here!  Two questions:
>
> 1.  What's a good backup program/strategy for Linux (especially the Ubuntu
> distro) that is on par with Apple's Time Machine backup program.  (Time
> Machine rocks!  It is without question the best backup program out there,
> but it only works on Macs.)
>
> 2.  Does anyone out there in Chicago Python land have any experience with
> the Kali Linux installation???  It sounds like a great OS to play with....
> and besides, I love their dragon logo!  (I know, how superficial of me to
> choose an OS just for its logo, right?  Well I figure that any OS that uses
> the dragon as its main symbol must be worth checking out, right?!  LOL!)
>
> Well.... there's nothing like wiping your hard drive clean and NOT being
> able to read your backed up files on your external hard drive!  When I
> realized what I had done to my computer my stomach sank to the floor and I
> had a really sick feeling, but.... I guess this inevitably happens when you
> spend a lot of time messing around with computers, huh?
>
> Am I really dumb or what?
>
> Thanks for the feedback!  Any information would be helpful.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Douglas Lewit
>
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 3, 2015 at 11:18 AM, Japhy Bartlett <japhy at pearachute.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Spaces and tabs both work, but if you mix them it creates a terrible
>> mess.  So by convention, we all agreed to use spaces for our collective
>> sanity.
>>
>>
>> I wanted to make another very slight criticism of your code; often when
>> people start learning Python they get to the part about classes and
>> inheritance and start using classes for everything.  So it's good to see
>> that you've figured out how that works, but it's not really helpful to your
>> program.  I can see ways that all could be much simpler!
>>
>>
>> Well done though, and thank you for posting actual Python code :)
>>
>> - Japhy
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 3, 2015 at 10:57 AM, Lewit, Douglas <d-lewit at neiu.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> I was thinking about that last night!  ;-)   So then I assume that
>>> "None" is equivalent to Java's null, but according to what you wrote above
>>> "None" evaluates to False in a truth test?  I didn't know that!  Very cool.
>>>
>>> What's the difference between spaces and tabs?  My favorite text editors
>>> for program writing are the Unix/Linux/Mac editors *Vim* and *Emacs*.
>>> Both of those have builtin tab functions.  Emacs is especially good with
>>> deciding where to place tab indentations.  Vim is okay too, but Emacs is
>>> really, really good.
>>>
>>> I repeated the same program in Python 3.  Some interesting changes!
>>>  10/3 gives you 3 in Python 3.  10/3 gives you 3.333333333333 in Python 3.
>>> To get 3 you need 10//3.  We all know about the print function.  And some
>>> other changes too.  Do you think the language benefitted from these
>>> backward INcompatible changes?  I think the Python community is still
>>> wondering about that.
>>>
>>> On Mon, Mar 2, 2015 at 4:40 PM, Brian Ray <brianhray at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> i probably meant ""while L.next.next", but you get what I mean, I hope.
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Mar 2, 2015 at 4:38 PM, Brian Ray <brianhray at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>  Just some small formatting issues. Try to use spaces (4) not tabs.
>>>>>
>>>>> and "while not L.next.next" is preferred over "while L.next.next !=
>>>>> None"
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>  On Fri, Feb 27, 2015 at 5:57 PM, Lewit, Douglas <d-lewit at neiu.edu>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>  Hey guys--and ladies too!  It's been a while since I shared any
>>>>>> Python work with this forum, so I figured hey, why not?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> This is my first effort at implementing a *linked list* in Python.
>>>>>> Fun stuff!  I'm taking a Java data structures course right now at
>>>>>> Northeastern.  Java is a nice language, and according to the online
>>>>>> statistics Java is the king of all programming languages, at least for
>>>>>> right now.  (The computer world is extremely fickle, so we really don't
>>>>>> know which programming language will be "the king" in 5 or 10 years.)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Anyhow, I purchased this book on Python data structures by Magnus Lie
>>>>>> Hetland.  Great book and so helpful!  It has even helped me better
>>>>>> understand the concepts in my Java course.  (The languages are
>>>>>> different--sure thing--but I think the core concepts are almost exactly the
>>>>>> same.)  The name of the book is PYTHON ALGORITHMS.  Magnus Lie Hetland is
>>>>>> the author.  It's really good.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> So I'm attaching my code.  Please be kind in your criticisms!  I know
>>>>>> it's not the Mona Lisa of computer programming, but hey, if I'm lucky my
>>>>>> mother will tape a printed copy of the program to the refrigerator door and
>>>>>> leave it there with a gold star on it for the next few days!!!  ;-)   Is
>>>>>> that really asking for too much?!  LOL!!!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Best,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Douglas.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>  _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Chicago mailing list
>>>>>> Chicago at python.org
>>>>>> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/chicago
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Brian Ray
>>>>> @brianray
>>>>> (773) 669-7717 <%28773%29%20669-7717>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Brian Ray
>>>> @brianray
>>>> (773) 669-7717
>>>>
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