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.

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:

• /etc/passwd (and /etc/shadow) should be dealt with in a different way. Currently I only preserve the old one, however new system accounts are introduced with new releases and as such the original file should be preserved. User accounts from the original system should be added (by copying from the old, backed up /etc/passwd file) to the new system by appending their lines onto the new /etc/passwd.
• -j archives and compresses the config dirs with bzip2, but there is no decompression option. Workaround: expand the compressed archive manually and run rh.config restore inside the expanded hierarchy.

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.
 

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).
 

Overview 

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.

More details in the thesis that describes the tool.

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!<<