Fire Crow's questions

How can I setup an apache mod-proxy server to server content from a seperate designated server, in a way that I can change which server to serve content from without restarting apache?

The content server will change periodically, either for maintenance, or because of failure.

I have an app that does not need to be in a cluster, but I want to have a static version of the webpage display in the event the main app server crashes.

I also want the option to update the codebase on the server test it and then switch out the old live server.

I've set up mod_proxy using

ProxyPass / http://appserver.com
ProxyPassReverse / http://appserver.com

this works but seams to require a restart with different settings to change the direction. which defeats the purpose of using it on a live server.

I've also tried mod_balencer which works great for the failover but requires an apache restart to set it back to serving up the main app server when it's backup.

     ProxyPass / balancer://hotcluster/
     <Proxy balancer://hotcluster>
            BalancerMember http://dyn:80 loadfactor=1
            BalancerMember http://basic:80 status=+H
            ProxySet lbmethod=bytraffic
     </Proxy>

Is there a way I can set what the current app server is without restarting apache?

I'm writing a backup script in BASH on a linux machine (gentoo)

The script will backup all folders in a certain directory.

The folders will have varying privileges and belong to different users and groups.

In order to make sure my backup script has read privileges to all the the files and folders I'm tempted to run the backup script as root.

Is this safe? Are there any specific techniques to achieve this without root privileges?

Is there a way to automatically backup of files and folders triggered by a file or folder replace action.

I'm looking for somthing like git-hooks or a listener of some sort that can run a version-control-like process automatically when a file or folder has been replaced.

I'm looking specifically for a hook that can trigger a script the rest is fairly straigt forward to me in terms of scripting the comparison and backup process.

The scenario is this: the art department at an add agency is delivering files to the flash developers and they are having some verisoning conflicts.

The fash developers use version control but hte art departmen does not.

The goal is to impliment a version control like environment that checks in files and tracks changes automatically when files are uploaded to the share server from the gui.

This is all taking place on the MAC operating system.

looks like I found the answer:
the FSEvents API appears to fire events associated with the file system

developer.apple.com documentation for FSEvents API

Python wrapper library for FSEvents API

mac-forums.com article

Is there a command in GNU Screen to direct standard output to the copy buffer

I've been doing alot of work with files, it's great to copy and past the filenames I want into commands

e.g.

ls | grep proc

$ ls | grep cal
calendar.inc-gen.php

// enter copy mode
$^a y 
// backward search for gen_chg
? cal
// start region
SPC
//goto to end of file by forward search php
php
// done 
ENT
// type command line
$ git rm ^p
// creates
$ git rm calendar.inc-gen.php

I'm aware there are easier ways to do this with a bash script, but often I find myself needed a specialized piece of information from the terminal screen and it would be great to just type

ls | grep cal > To_GNU_SREEN_COPY_:) or something

dennis's solution below works

you may need to set the bufferfile in your .screenrc bufferfile /tmp/screen-exchange