Last edited: 2004 07 08

MailMirror - a tool to allow mail reading with several mail clients, based on the mbox format.
This tool allows you to create a mirror structure of your dirs and mbox files scattered across your homedir, so that mail for each area or subject of your interest will be physically stored together with the other files that are part of a project. I currently hold 151 different mailboxes throughout my homedir.
You not only get a hierarchical organization for your mailboxes, but they also stay where they belong, i.e. together with the project's other files. Also, the hierarchical structure is also created for other mail reader, so you (in theory) can freely switch between mail readers. Before switching I recommend you to expunge all mailboxes, though, since deletion flagging is particular to each mail reader. You also need an example configuration file.

RH.config - a tool to preserve and restore a RedHat Linux machine configuration.
This tool allows you to backup /etc and /root (some extra files from your homedir too), so that some of them can be restored on a new system. Original files are preserved with the extension .orig. Some config files still need manipulation, but most of the work is done by rh.config. It's far from perfect, but it's a first implementation of a configuration "wallet".
A few bugs/limitations worth mentioning:

Config - a tool to quickly configure a notebook to a new, preconfigured environment.
This is most usable on a notebook (mines, for instance...), but can also be used in a lab where machines frequently have to change configuration, such as LAS. Very early in the boot process, this script asks for a user input. You can configure it the way you like, for each environment you're going to fit it in. I work with a combination of screens (LCD and external monitor), network device (Ethernet and wireless), IP configuration, DNS resolver configuration, proxies for browsers and so on...
This script must be inserted at the end of /etc/rc.sysinit so that everything is properly dealt with before any higher level module or subsystem is invoked. Control over configuration files is done by handling symbolic links to files with proper, different names.
 
Backup -  a tool for backing up your homedir and other useful dirs to a server (disk).
Well, it seems everybody has got their own backup script, so this one is mine. It's not user friendly (which of my tools are anyway?), but it does the work of backing up. I never had time to do the restore portion, but anyone who run regular backups knows that backing up is an everyday task, whereas restoring is a hopefully rare task. The workaround of course is to fetch the desired files from the  compressed archive file by supplying arguments to tar x. It does full and incremental backups and stores every backup session on a different file on your server (via a NFS mount).
 

DoIt4Me  -  a tool for backing up your homedir and other useful dirs to a server (disk).
Overview 

Packman -  a tool to generate sequences of packets of any kind, in particular TCP/IP packets.
Packman allows you to generate any sort of packet desired, as long as you carefully build its structure on a template file, using a language especially designed for this scenario. Not only that, but it can also generate packets following the behaviour of a state machine that you can also specify, using that same language. The language is unique: it may be the only computer language that has "but" as a primitive:-). Unfortunately, Pupim hasn't been able to complete the docs, so there's very little, if any. However, the tool is completely usable. I'll also make available his grant's reports (Portuguese, I'm afraid...), which might be helpful to understand its inner workings.

PFSAF -  a tool to automatically pre-configure Win2k for future forensic analysis.
More details in the thesis that describes the tool.

Paulo's simplified Gentoo install guide -  my very own quick guide, summarizing Gentoo's install guide for day-to-day installations.
Assumes previous knowledge of the user with Linux and Unix system administration. That's my recipe to install from the start a 2.6 kernel and udev (no devfs). >>this needs updating!<<

rsnapshot.conf -  "rsnapshot" is a good backup solution, especially for backing up to another disk. It uses hardlinks to  effectively use disk space. This is my own config file, tailored to a Gentoo system (in this case it's worth backing up the operating system as well, trust me:-). I've omitted a few dirs that are not needed or that can/will be reconstructed. Basically, you've got to customize only "snapshot_root" and the backup points section.

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