replacing our TERASTATION NAS with a FREENAS box

Posted by Adrian on Nov 30, 2008 in Open Source | 5 comments Sometime ago I blogged about our purchase of a Terastation as a network attached storage device.  Well, it hasnt worked that well at all, and after very nearly loosing all our data when either 1 or 2 hard drives failed (in a RAID 10 array) resulting in 5 days of downtime, I’ve given up on this device. My thanks to Dave and Jake from Senokian who supported us well, recovering all the...
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Welcome news – RBS guarantees not to increase business finance costs

Posted by Adrian on Nov 23, 2008 in business | 1 comment Tomorrow is Pre Budget report day in the UK, and in the midst of the economic crisis there are likely to be some significant changes to minimise the effects of the imminent recession. We at Mercian Labels bank with the RBS Group, who today announced that they will guarantee the current lending rates and amounts to business for a year. Fortunately we have a reasonable balance sheet and havent had...
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The credit crunch – watch your bad debt

Posted by Adrian on Nov 19, 2008 in business | 0 comments Just a quick reminder to all business people that bad debt is a terrible drain on profits, and in theese uncertain times, watching your credit risk is crucial.  A cost effective way of doing this is to use a credit reference agency, and the best value one we have found is creditserve.co.uk but there are many more.  Fora  few hundred pounds a year, you can get unlimited access to UK...
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a new consultancy supporting open source in the Midlands – Outserve Ltd

Posted by Adrian on Nov 17, 2008 in business, Open Source | 1 comment This morning I met Philip Oakley from Outserve Ltd, a new midlands based consultancy working from Wolverhampton Science park solely dedicated to supporting businesses with open source software. There are so few of these companies out there that actually know and understand FOSS, that I hope that Philip gets his new business offf the ground and helps other companies do what we have done here at...
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how to backup and restore from a complete reinstall?

Posted by Adrian on Nov 17, 2008 in Open Source | 3 comments I upgraded by ubuntu 8.04 laptop installation to 8.10 a few weeks ago, and due to a pretty stupid move on my part (trying to move the laptop in the middle of the upgrade and losing power), I coudlnt get back into the OS and had to reformat the OS partition and do a clean install.  All my data was safe as it was intentionally stored on a seperate partition, but I had a complete waste of a day...
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Open source migration update

Posted by Adrian on Nov 17, 2008 in Open Source | 0 comments Its been some time since I blogged an update on our open source migration. So in summary: Project start: January 2007 Email: whole company migrated to Zimbra, starting August 2007, finished December 2007 Web server: migrated to Ubuntu dedicated server September 2007 CRM/MIS: Rewrite of complete new CRM/MIS in php/postgresql – started March 2007, finished August 2008 Phone system: complete...
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Mercian Labels Group appoints new Chairman

Posted by Adrian on Nov 17, 2008 in Labels, press releases | 0 comments PRESS RELEASE 17 November 2008 Cannock, Staffordshire, UK Mercian Labels Group appoints new Chairman Labelling specialists the Mercian Labels Group, based in Cannock UK, have recently appointed Mr Dennis Marrison as Chairman to support its next phase of expansion. The Group is experiencing rapid domestic and export growth with the success of Label Lock, launched this year as a flagship brand...
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