Backups are fun and exciting! Restores are exciting, in a terrifying and stressful way. Fixing serious bugs is gratifying, in a depressing way. I am glad to announce two software releases: Obnam version 1.6.1 and larch version 1.20131130. Obnam is my backup application, larch is a Python copy-on-write B-tree implementation that Obnam uses. I've uploaded the new versions to Debian unstable and to my own apt repository at [code.liw.fi] (also for wheezy). (I don't have the energy to upload to Debian backports: help is welcome there.) These are mainly bug fix releases, and minor improvements. The larch release fixes serious problems, and everyone should be upgrading. NEWS for larch:

• Serious bug fixed: the "KeyError" crash for reference counts. This was false memory use optimisation, which triggered a rare bug in related code. Repeatable test case by Rob Kendrick, and helpful analysis by Itamar Turing-Trauring.
• Serious bug fixed: another "node missing" bug. This crash was caused by a bug that overwrote on-disk reference count groups with zeroes. Repeatable test case by Rob Kendrick.
• Fixes to fsck from Antoine Brenner.

NEWS for Obnam (combining versions 1.6 and 1.6.1, both released today):

• Fix Debian package dependencies correctly.
• Stop logging paramiko exceptions that get converted into another type of exception by the SFTP plugin in Obnam.
• obnam-benchmark can now use an installed version of larch. Patch by Lars Kruse.
• Obnam has been ported to FreeBSD by Itamar Turner-Trauring of HybridCluster.
• Backup progress reporting now reports scanned file data, not just backed up file data. This will hopefully be less confusing to people.
• The list-keys, client-keys, and list-toplevels commands now obey a new option, --key-details, to show the usernames attached to each public key. Patch by Lars Kruse.
• New option --ssh-command to set the command Obnam runs when invoking ssh. patch by Lars Kruse.
• obnam clients can now be used without being an existing client. Patch by Itamar Turner-Trauring.
• New option --ssh-host-keys-check to better specify how SSH host keys should be checked. Patch by Itamar Turner-Trauring.

Bug fixes:

• Fix"obnam list-toplevels so it doesn't give an error when it's unable to read the per-client directory of another client, when encryption is used. Fix by Lars Kruse.
• Fix the encryption plugin to give a better error message when it looks for client directories but fails to find them. Fix by Lars Kruse.
• obnam list-toplevels got confused when the repository contained extra files, such as "lock" (left there by a previous, crashed Obnam run). It no longer does. Fix by Lars Kruse.
• The SFTP plugin now handles another error code (EACCESS) when writing a file and the directory it should go into not existing. Patch by Armin Gr linger.
• Obnam's manual page now explains about breaking long logical lines into multiple physical ones.
• The /~/ path prefix in SFTP URLs works again, at least with sufficiently new versions of Paramiko (1.7.7.1 in Debian wheezy is OK). Reported by Lars Kruse.
• The Nagios plugin to report errors in a way Nagios expects. Patch by Martijn Grendelman.
• The Nagios plugin for Obnam now correctly handles the case where a backup repository for a client exists, but does not have a backup yet. Patch by Lars Kruse.
• obnam ls now handles trailing slashes in filename arguments. Reported by Biltong.
• When restoring a backup, Obnam will now continue past errors, instead of aborting with the first one. Patch by Itamar Turner-Trauring.

This should really be titled A movie vaguely representing Beowulf, but all sexed up with various salubrious elements . Hrothgar was treated much better in the original; and all the blatant and gratuitous sexuality brought in into the movie was a turn off. But then, I might be in the minority of the audience who had any familiarity with the poem. The characters in the movie seemed two dimensional caricatures (the only compelling performance was from Grendel s mother). And the changes made to the story line also lost the prowling menace of the latter years of the king of the Geats. After watching Hollywood debacles like this one, I am driven to wonder about why Hollywood writers seem to think they can so improve upon the work of writers whose story has stood the test of time. Making Beowulf into a boastful liar and cheat (even in the tale of the sea monsters his men imply that that they knew their lord was a liar) in an age where honor and battle prowess were everything I mean, what were the producers thinking? Most certainly not a movie I am going to recommend. I had not researched the movie much before I went into the show, and it was a surprise to me to see that this was an animated movie a la Final Fantasy , and while I was impressed with the computer graphics (reflections in general, and reflections of ripples in the water were astounding), the not a cartoon but not a realistic movie experience was a trifle distracting, and detracted from telling the tale. I like IMAX 3d, and the glasses are improving.