LeeNukes

Free online backup with Virgin Media and Linux

My ISP Virgin Media offers online backup packages as part of their internet bundles.

The bundle that I am currently on offers 10GB of online backup space FREE as part of the account. Well, obviously its not really free as I’m paying for the internet connection.

The partner that Virgin Media use to offer this online backup service is provided by a company called steek who are based in Belgium. The software that they provide is Windows only, but you can make it work with Wine to a satisfactory degree.

Here is how I set mine up:

1) Download the Software from Virgin Media My Stuff Page: https://my.virginmedia.com/dashboard/start

2) Using winecfg I setup a Z: drive which points to my root /

3) In the Virgin Media V STuff Backup Software I turned off all the auto backup email items as they just look for Hotmail and My Documents etc and I choose “Backup All Files/Folders”

4) Now simply choose the files you want from this screen:

I am backing up my .evolution, Documents, and Pictures. That way at least I have these backed up. The software works ok, although it doesn’t seem very good at only uploading the changes, if the file changes it seems to need to upload the whole file again.

There are many more options in the software that can be configured but what I have setup is enough to get you going with it.

You may want to setup this software to autostart with your PC, to do this I added a script:

#!/bin/bash
sleep 480
env WINEPREFIX=”/home/lee/.wine” wine “C:\Program Files\VirginMedia\V Stuff Backup\v_stuff_backup.exe”
exit

to my scripts directory and then I setup Sessions in Gnome (System -> Preferences -> Personal -> Sessions) of this:/home/lee/Scripts/startvbackup.sh

This starts it 8 minutes after login enough time to warrant a connection from it :)

Regarding TomTom Leaches

Please See this article/thread: http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/124264/

They report having problems with TomTom software due to the client software not being Linux compatible.

I had a quick look on winehq and they have TomTom Home 1.X running quite well: Wine Application Database

Where is the problem? Just use wine, sure its not native blah blah and it doesn’t mean they are helping Linux with clients etc but stop moaning and just install wine.

Buying games using Steam with Wine

OK, so for the first time I found I was having problems purchasing a game in Steam using my wine setup.

I’ve only just got the sound back in Team Fortress 2, and now this?!

Well, I’ve got a solution for you. The problem appears to be with the Wine implementation of iexplorer. The issue is you can click on the purchase button as often as you like, but it won’t take you to anywhere.

I’m running wine 1.1.5 and Fedora 10 Beta

My solution is thus:

Using your web browser in Linux (outside of wine) goto the Steam page and goto http://store.steampowered.com

Navigate to the game you wish to purchase and click on purchase, for example I’m buying Garrys Mod so I search for it and click purchase.

It then presents you with a Got Steam? popup:

With that window selected press Ctrl+U to view the source, you’re looking for a section like this:

class="gotSteam_yes" onmouseover="this.className='gotSteam_yes_ovr';"
onmouseout="this.className='gotSteam_yes';"
onclick="opener.location.href='steam://purchase/218'; window.close();"
>Yes, I already have
Steam installed!

The important bit is the onclick section.

Copy the bit between the ” ‘s ” so for my game, Garrys Mod, its:

steam://purchase/218

This is a trigger for steam to navigate to the purchase game section.

Now we know where to get the game, we can instruct Internet Explorer in Wine to open it, the command for my setup is:

env WINEPREFIX=~/.wine wine "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" steam://purchase/218

This will then trigger Steam to load and prompt you with the purchase section.

Job done. Its a bit of a pain, but how often do you buy games really?