Multiple keyboards etc

My last post mentioned keyboard layout arrangements at my desk. I have now completed building a double keyboard slide (two sliding shelves directly on top of each other) the purpose of which is easy access to two different keyboards/mice for working with two computers simultaneously. This job took all day on Wednesday to complete and since then there has been a bit of tweaking to get everything right. This has included fitting a locking pin to the top slide so that the depth can be adjusted and locked at positions other than all the way out, and shortening the runners on the bottom slide to reduce the depth when all the way out. Ultimately there was a bit of juggling to figure out the depth to set each slide to that is reasonably optimal while minimising depth to the most practical extent. The arrangement is that the right angle brackets have both sets of runners attached to the same brackets and both shelves are the same width. A lot of stiffening had to be added because the bottom shelf is relatively heavy, so extra brackets needed to be added and wooden rails had to be put on the sides. There are in fact four pairs of brackets supporting the rails.

The next step is to have two KVMs, one per keyboard/mouse set, to allow the keyboards to be assigned to any computer out of four. I am waiting for an order of USB cables I need to hook up the second KVM to be delivered. This is a much more versatile arrangement than having only one keyboard able to be switched.

The old keyboard slide that used to be on the right hand side and holding the Windows computer's keyboard has been moved to the left side to be used for cups and any food items and has been adjusted to slope away from the desk so any liquid spills won't go over the computer which is under the desk on that side. 

I am still experimenting with a shelf on top of the office drawer cabinet and have not reached a decision about having it or not. The replacement keyboard slide for the Windows keyboard to sit on is still to be assembled and mounted under the desk. At the moment I am considering whether I even need it there or whether to use some other arrangement as the dual keyboard arrangement will make it easy to use the second keyboard to control that computer. Alternatively a fully raised slide like the upper one will still allow me to use space under the desk for the 2nd KVM etc. Another option is to adapt the top of the desk to allow the keyboard to sit on the desk.

It looks like Borg is easy to set up on serverpc, I just have to install and configure SSH on serverpc to get it set up to be the backup host, it will have borg installed on it as well and uses SSH as the network protocol, more reliable and faster than a Samba connection.

ReinstallMyPC: Symlinking /home/patrick/Maps to /mnt/share/mainpc/maps

This week I started using serverpc to store some Qgis maps resources for NZ Rail Maps. Because everything has to work across network and local access (directly from mainpc) it means mainpc has to have a symlink created as mentioned in the title.

Using the command to do this:

ln -s /home/patrick/Maps /mnt/share/mainpc/maps

whereby maps is the name of the link that is created in /mnt/share/mainpc, to /home/patrick/Maps

Otherwise there is not portability between network and local access to resources because the paths are different (on remote computers the /mnt/share/mainpc path is always the one that the Maps folder is mapped to over a SMB network share).

So this is another task that has to be accomplished when reinstalling Linux on mainpc. As such I am now putting in a new tag, which is going to be ReinstallMyPC, and will be attached to some of the other articles, for steps to follow when reinstalling my computers.

New bits for "old" computers [7]

The serverpc is now being used to store additional mapping resources, specifically aerial photos as the amount of space these take up is significant and at times has filled up a lot of disk space on mainpc. I am working on a new layout of my keyboards so that I can use both computers at the same time for mapping quite easily, since Qgis will mostly be running in a VM on serverpc since it can be allocated 12 GB of memory on that computer. At the same time I am using a MapResources VM specifically set up on mainpc in order to be able to guarantee saving the session each time that I shut down that computer. This is because I have experienced ongoing issues with hibernation in Debian which can be very reliable a lot of the time but can also be frustratingly unreliable at other times. I got the replacement K230 keyboard and it's much better than the previous one so that is the keyboard being used.

The two keyboards, the main one that is switchable between computers and the K230 keyboard for serverpc, will have a double stacked sliding shelf arrangement so that the main keyboard shelf I have that slides under the desk will come all the way out for the main keyboard, and above it will be a second shelf that also slides out, and holds the keyboard and mouse for serverpc. This second shelf will not be able to be slid in without removing the keyboard and mouse off it, as it will go right under the desktop with no clearance. I am working today on that plus also increasing the size of the right hand keyboard slide where the keyboard for the Windows computer sits, because a bigger one is needed, and installing a slide on the left hand side, that will be used only for cups. So a lot of work today with the woodworking tools etc to achieve that.

One of the things I am going to have to do with the aerial photos while mapping is to make VRT layers out of them in order to reduce the number of layers, this should improve the processing, and at the same time reduce the number of layers that are being stored on disk to only the ones actually needed, because of the disk space usage. Since I am eventually going to want to be using the aerial coverage for the whole country. In order to be able to select just the images I want, I am going to have to learn scripting so that I can have a script that will read the QLR layer definition files that Qgis produces, and grab the specific images listed and copy them (along with the sidecar files) to another directory. Apart from having only the files that I need, it also means the VRT create utility can only use the files it needs.