Linux is everywhere, not just on desktops. It's on phones, ebook readers, on public terminals, on routers, on electricity meters and many more devices. The key to Linux' success is it's diversity. It is possible to run Linux on nearly every technical device that has a CPU. Many of these are closed systems, so often you don't even notice that Linux is running on that particular device, but there is always a way to gain access to its internals and modify it the way you want. But often you have the problem that heavy modifications might void your warranty or make updates to a more recent firmware version impossible. In this article I want to show you a simple but powerful way to modify such systems in a non-destructive way.
On Linux devices and their partitions are named automatically when being plugged in. They have a base name (for SCSI devices it's
sd), a device identifier (a lowercase letter) and a number for every partition. These names depend on the order in which the devices are plugged in, so they are not static at all.
You are probably familiar with RAID-1, which is a mirroring technique for synchronizing data between two or more disks for the sake of redundancy. Normally, RAID-1 mirrors data between several local disks, but you can also sync them over Ethernet. This is not conventional RAID-1 but at least comparable.
Data safety is very important but often neglected. How important keeping one's data safe really is gets often recognized when disasters already happened. This article covers a few ideas how to prevent data loss even if your hard drive crashes or your house is on fire.