by Walter Alejandro Iglesias
"I'm the last survivor of a dead culture, and I don't really belong in the world anymore. And in some ways I feel I ought to be dead." -- Ritchard M. Stallman.
I ask myself every morning why I am here. And all the love my mother gave me is the prove that this fact is not just the consequence of a biological accident. I clearly remember how I felt when I was four, five years old; how I saw people. I can objectively say that I've never felt to belong in this world.
In my young days, in a final attempt of finding my place, between other not so cheap (and unsuccessful) ones like leaving my country, I searched in books written in this and other centuries (some can be seen like messages in bottles) and I've found others explaining with other words the same I paraphrase every morning to the mirror, convincing myself that I am not the only one in this world that needs a reason, a sense, that I am not the only "stranger", that I am not the only wrong. Indeed, the "world" (the human world), like a concept, needs a sense.
Some times I find myself exposing my ideas in front of others. The worst damage ideas from others can do is to enrich the own conceptions. People see a menace in this vicious ideologies that misinterpret as ideas, and all idea is distorted in a football shirt by its atrophied instinct. That's why, in most of cases, I get ignored or insulted. I understand all those that just 'survive' (or may I say 'subsist'?) only in this point: their need of calling me insane to disguise their misery. Despite this "normal" people, the other that I've found in (some) books seems to agree with my insane assumptions. The big contrast between the few (that I secretly consider my real friends) that share their thoughts and the insipid life of the millions that nothing have to share is the evidence that world exists like a whole much more because of fear and obedience than because of wish and consensus.
Certainly, I am alive. This could mean that I am not part of a dead culture. And if we understand that "culture", being it human, cannot be other thing than a "concept", "our mutable conception of the world", and taking in mind that written history mostly shows a concatenation of irrational, stupid violence, we can deduce that what is actually dead is "normal" people. Of course, theoretically, all mankind facts can rightly be considered part of that that we call culture. But, what I like to think culture is (or should be) just lives in the consciousness of some few human minds.
The following are some BASH scrips I have in my ~/bin folder. They run mostly on Debian, you should modify some things to use them in other distributions. Some comments are too verbose, not the best programming practice but useful like a tutorial.
Backup data to a single or multisession CD:
#!/bin/bash
#
## backup-data - Walter A. Iglesias
#
## This script save data to a cd/dvdrom. Perhaps you will never use
## it but it will help you to understand how cdrecord and mkisofs
## work. I used Debian wodim and genisoimage names to alert those who
## use the original cdrecord, mkisofs that have a slightly different
## sintax. Read your cdrecord man page and make the necessary
## changes. WARNING: If you have a (small) size limited /tmp dir
## (i.e. mounted in a separated partition) you might create a
## $HOME/tmp; mktemp -t option will recognize it.
#
usage()
{
echo -e "Use mode: `basename $0` [-m] [<cd/path1>=]<hd/path1> \\
[[<cd/path2>=]hd/path2> [<cd/pathn=]hd/pathn>...]
-m for multisession."
## For example, giving (later read by -graft-points genisoimage
## option) this paths in this order:
##
## /loco/tonto=/home/user/bin /loco/boludo/video=/home/user/Video
##
## where paths that folow the = sign must be EXISTENT hard disk paths
## and the ones that precede the equal sign are that will be written
## to the cd, genisoimage will create:
##
## loco
## |-- boludo
## | `-- video
## `-- tonto
##
## In the given order, wodim will complete the paths and write bin HD
## files to "tonto" CD dir and "video" HD files to "Video" CD dir (See
## that "loco" is created by the first argument and respected by the
## second). In a multisession cd wodim will take in care the existent
## tree and will not overwrite tonto or video dirs content if them
## exist. Conclusion: the only thing you must take in care is to
## CHOOSE BASEDIR/BASENAME CDROM PATHS THAT DO NOT EXIST IN CDROM
## MULTISESSION TREE. In a single session you will have no problem.
}
## Checking general args.
if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then
usage
exit 1
fi
## If cdrom is mounted unmount it.
if [ "$( grep cdrom -o /etc/mtab )" = "cdrom" ]; then
umount /cdrom
fi
## Checking if option -m is present.
if [ "$1" = "-m" ]; then
## Checking -m args.
if [ "$2" = "" ]; then
usage
exit 1
fi
## Geting genisoimage -graft-points arguments.
while [ $2 ]; do
paths="$paths $2"
shift
done
## Label to graphical file manager.
label="BAK-$(date +%Y-%m-%d)"
## Saving iso to $TMPDIR.
image=$(mktemp -t bak.iso.XXXXXX)
## With the wodim -msinfo option we will save to a variable the
## session offset that is where finish the old multi sessions recorded
## in the cd.
sectors=$(wodim -msinfo dev=/dev/cdrom)
## Below, we will include this in the -C genisoimage option to create
## the img. (put a blank or a multissesion recorded cd *without
## mounting it* in your device and run in your terminal wodim -msinfo
## dev=/dev/cdrom to see the output). If you create the img file
## without include the -C option with the sectors info in genisoimage,
## at time to burn it wodim will do it without errors messages, but
## when you will mount the cd and list its contents you will not find
## the new dirs. It will look like nothing would happened.
## The first conditional is a workaround, with -C 0,0 genisoimage
## returns an error.
if [ "$sectors" != "0,0" ] ; then
genisoimage -dir-mode 0755 -r -J -C $sectors \
-M /dev/cdrom -o $image -graft-points $paths
else
genisoimage -dir-mode 0755 -r -J -o $image \
-V $label -graft-points $paths
fi &&
wodim -v speed=2 -multi -data dev=/dev/cdrom -eject $image
trap "rm $image* 2>/dev/null" EXIT
exit 0
else
## Default option, single session.
while [ $1 ]; do
paths="$paths $1"
shift
done
label="BAK-$(date +%Y-%m-%d)"
image=$(mktemp -t bak.iso.XXXXXX)
genisoimage -r -J -o $image -V $label -graft-points $paths &&
wodim -v speed=2 -data dev=/dev/cdrom -eject $image
## trap will execute rm when get EXIT signal.
trap "rm $image* 2>/dev/null" EXIT
exit 0
fi
## End backup-data.
You can mail me to eloi at roquesor.com
.