Re: [expert] drakbackup
Wednesday, civileme mused: The employer was too cheap to give me a separate workstation, so it was my six years of work that was lost. For the same reason, it was risky to try restoring from tape though I had always done one file a month. Anyway, the tapes were stretched and dirty and the drive was unusable. I have been burning CDs since that time, even when the burns were at 1X. Civileme Oooh! I think I would have to smack that employer around a little! Well, back from my original post - I googled around for some other ideas and end up with a simple bash script that I adjusted to fit my own needs and then did crontab -e for 3:45 am every morning. I don't have more than 300 megs total that I'm backing up, it's just the configs, web, email, etc... that takes time to get back. Anything else (mp3's, digital photos, programs, etc... I put on cdr's. This stuff goes on cd/rw: #!/bin/bash DATA=/home /var CONFIG=/etc set $(date) tar -cvf /mnt/backup/data/df$2$3.tgz $DATA tar -cvf /mnt/backup/data/cf$2$3.tgz $CONFIG mkisofs -o /tmp/backup.iso /mnt/backup/* cdrecord -v blank=fast dev=0,2,0 speed=2 -eject /tmp/backup.iso rm -f /tmp/backup.iso rm -f /mnt/backup/data/* rm -f /mnt/backup/config/* So far, this seems to be doing great! I often stay up late and fall asleep at the keyboard, so all I have to do is make sure I've switched disks in the morning and I never lose anything important. Mike -- Michael Holt Banning, CA(o_ [EMAIL PROTECTED](o_ (o_ //\ www.holt-tech.net(/)_ (/)_ V_/_www.mandrake.com Bad or missing mouse driver. Spank the cat? (Y/N) Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] drakbackup
On Wed, 2003-02-05 at 14:32, Brian Schroeder wrote: From: Luca Olivetti [EMAIL PROTECTED] You just scared me to death. I had no problem reding the tapes to restore some files from time to time (when a user deleted them by mistake), but I guess murphy's law applies here: in case of disaster the tape won't be readable :-( Absolutely! That's the one thing you can be sure of. The tape always works, until the disaster. But the one time you realy need it, no go. It has happened to me too. Never lost a tape but I have lost the reader! :) Brian _ Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963 __ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com -- James Sparenberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] drakbackup
On Wed, 2003-02-05 at 14:16, Jack Coates wrote: On Wed, 2003-02-05 at 14:00, Anne Wilson wrote: On Wednesday 05 Feb 2003 9:48 pm, Luca Olivetti wrote: civileme wrote: Then one day I arrived at work to find the fileserver unresponsive. I eventually powered down and found the disk would not boot and enough of it was corrupted to make the rest inaccessible. OK no problem, data is on tapes, let's reload OS--- done reach for tape Oops--tape is unreadable reach for two week old tape--E gee that one is no good either Tapes sent to data recovery service--well whattayaknow They charged quite a bit to give me the bad news that six years of work was lost. That's what the verify feature of your backup program is there for. It take twice the time and it'll probably cause more wear and tear on the tape but at least you'll know the tape is readable. 'Fraid not. I was running backup with full verify, but it still didn't stop the drive from refusing the tape next time, saying it couldn't read it. And I was using good quality branded DAT tapes. Anne After using and selling Enterprise IT products and services for nearly ten years, I do not trust any backup solution as far as I can throw the media. They all more or less suck, and exist purely to give a false sense of security and we did our due diligence to the purchaser. I use and recommend to those who ask for an honest opinion the Linus Torvalds backup strategy: Real men upload their important data to FTP servers and let the world download it. That doesn't mean to upload your corporate database, but it does mean to replicate the data to other locations and use hard disks. Want some bad hdd's! got about 60 gigs of them here. Smallest is 200mb (been helping friend re-archive is life the last 3 weeks.). It comes down to an old telco procedure. Check the primary every day and the secondary twice as often. -- James Sparenberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
RE: [expert] drakbackup
So true. This is coming from when i did Server Support for Dell. Rob -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Brian Schroeder Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2003 4:33 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [expert] drakbackup From: Luca Olivetti [EMAIL PROTECTED] You just scared me to death. I had no problem reding the tapes to restore some files from time to time (when a user deleted them by mistake), but I guess murphy's law applies here: in case of disaster the tape won't be readable :-( Absolutely! That's the one thing you can be sure of. The tape always works, until the disaster. But the one time you realy need it, no go. It has happened to me too. Brian _ Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963 Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] drakbackup
On Wed, 2003-02-05 at 12:00, Wolfgang Bornath wrote: On Wed, Feb 05, 2003 at 19:08 +, Anne Wilson wrote: Talking of which - do you know any site with information on the different grades of media, with regard to lifespan. I'm careful with storage, but I'm aware that the media I'm using are not really suitable for longer storage. I just don't know how to choose the right ones. I don't have a link but there is one important factor: CDs also are vulnerable by wrong or careless handling. Don't ever touch the surface with your fingers because this leaves tiny fat particles. Store them in a dark room with medium temperature and low humidity. best bet were the cased media but I doubt there are any more drives for cased media. Only under these conditions you can think of real storage time like 10 years. I still have a set of 5.25 floppies with some dbaseIII data on them. They are still readable after 11 years due to good handling. Of course I have transferred the data to CD now but I'm just curious how long those floppies will last. Wobo, If I might add. If you use cases (and it's a good idea) make sure that they are fire and water proof... I just had some survers go under water and the backups survived because the cases where water tight. James wobo -- James Sparenberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] drakbackup
On Wed, 2003-02-05 at 17:28, Robert Barry wrote: I'm a CPA in my real life and I decided to go with removable hard drives for our office network. I just setup a mandrake server and use samba to backup up the NT fileserver right on to the removable hard drive. I have a set of shell scripts that mount the NT fileserver directories and cron runs it everynight at 11pm. It does about 3GBs of data. Then I shutdown and swap hard drive so I have a drive rotated offsite to my house. I usually swap hard drives every few days. Robert... The last line about backing up to a second location physically is the best Fire that destroy's your primary gets the tapes in the other room as well. James I have the mandrake server running headless and use SSH to access it from home or from my windows 2k desktop at work. For a small network like mine it is so easy to setup and run. Robert Barry __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com __ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com -- James Sparenberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
RE: [expert] drakbackup
If I might add. If you use cases (and it's a good idea) make sure that they are fire and water proof... I just had some survers go under water and the backups survived because the cases where water tight. What kind of cases are you using? Rob Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] drakbackup
On Thursday 06 Feb 2003 8:50 am, James Sparenberg wrote: On Wed, 2003-02-05 at 17:28, Robert Barry wrote: I'm a CPA in my real life and I decided to go with removable hard drives for our office network. I just setup a mandrake server and use samba to backup up the NT fileserver right on to the removable hard drive. I have a set of shell scripts that mount the NT fileserver directories and cron runs it everynight at 11pm. It does about 3GBs of data. Then I shutdown and swap hard drive so I have a drive rotated offsite to my house. I usually swap hard drives every few days. Robert... The last line about backing up to a second location physically is the best Fire that destroy's your primary gets the tapes in the other room as well. Which is why off-site backup is always recommended - whether you do it by electronic transfer or taking a tape home with you. Anne -- Registered Linux User No.293302 Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] drakbackup
On Thu, 2003-02-06 at 00:48, James Sparenberg wrote: ... I use and recommend to those who ask for an honest opinion the Linus Torvalds backup strategy: Real men upload their important data to FTP servers and let the world download it. That doesn't mean to upload your corporate database, but it does mean to replicate the data to other locations and use hard disks. Want some bad hdd's! got about 60 gigs of them here. Smallest is 200mb (been helping friend re-archive is life the last 3 weeks.). It comes down to an old telco procedure. Check the primary every day and the secondary twice as often. I bet I could trump that if I ever cleaned out my tools-n-junk closet :-) the point is of course that no one expects the hard disk to be reliable, unless and until they spend a few million on the kind of gear that makes a disk failure or 40 the kind of thing that one worries about in spare time. It's just extremely common to see that the database is restored not from the tape system, but from the rsync'd copy of an export sitting on the DBA or sysadmin's laptop. I also realize that if you've got 3TB to backup as opposed to 3GB, it's a whole different ballgame. The realistic options are asymmetric network synchronization and tape, and tape is far and away the price/performance leader. You do know the fastest data transport system on the planet, right? It's a courier carrying large storage media, Netflix being the most popular example. -- Jack Coates Monkeynoodle: A Scientific Venture... Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] drakbackup
Brian Schroeder wrote: From: Luca Olivetti [EMAIL PROTECTED] You just scared me to death. I had no problem reding the tapes to restore some files from time to time (when a user deleted them by mistake), but I guess murphy's law applies here: in case of disaster the tape won't be readable :-( Absolutely! That's the one thing you can be sure of. The tape always works, until the disaster. But the one time you realy need it, no go. It has happened to me too. Brian A very old saying that got drilled into me when I first started in this business: Computing experience is measured in the amount of data lost Truer words were never spoken.. We've all lost data due to a broken backup system. Personally, I still find permanantly writing data to a CD-R 700MB at a time unacceptable. If the data is changing daily, you'll very quickly have a cabinet full of usless CDs. CD-RWs are just not reliable, and still do not have the capacity to provide an adequate backup. If I have a server with a T-byte if data on it, I'm ceretainly not going to try to back it up 700MB at a time to CDs. I HAVE to depend on tapes. There's just nothing else out there with the necessary capacity. Ric Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] drakbackup
I will beat on tape for backup. MY tape drive faithfully backed up once a week and I rotated 6 tapes to stay current. (MAC fileserver 80). Then one day I arrived at work to find the fileserver unresponsive. I eventually powered down and found the disk would not boot and enough of it was corrupted to make the rest inaccessible. OK no problem, data is on tapes, let's reload OS--- done reach for tape Oops--tape is unreadable reach for two week old tape--E gee that one is no good either Tapes sent to data recovery service--well whattayaknow They charged quite a bit to give me the bad news that six years of work was lost. The employer was too cheap to give me a separate workstation, so it was my six years of work that was lost. For the same reason, it was risky to try restoring from tape though I had always done one file a month. Anyway, the tapes were stretched and dirty and the drive was unusable. I have been burning CDs since that time, even when the burns were at 1X. Civileme Oh come now Civilme! Due diligence here! If you do no maintenance on your back up system, you get what you deserve. I'm absolutely amazed that you let your tapes fall into that state. Just like any backup strategy, it requires maintenance! Your statement above is like saying: I didn't change the oil in my car for 3 years, and the engine died. That proves cars are no good. Sorry to beat up you, but you deserve it for even making the statement: tapes were stretched and dirty and the drive was unusable. rant So you threw a junky old tape, in a piece of crap tape drive, and the backup/restore failed? Gee.. really? I guess that proves beyond all doubt that tape backup systems can't be trusted. Didn't anyone bother to check this thing periodicly? Your backups are only as reliable as *you* make them. Garbage in, Garbage out. /rant Over the years, I've seen you give a lot of good advice, and help a lot of people. I've had a great deal of respect for you. But I guess everyone has their areas where they are just another DAU grin Ok.. I'll admit, I've lost data to faulty backup systems. But it's usually been my own fault. The short side of this is: CDs provide nowhere near the capacity required to do regular backups of changing data. And.. I really don't want to make perminant backups to CD-R of data that changes regularly, it's just wasteful. Besides, there is no way, I can backup my multi-T-Byte systems (at work) to CD! Tapes are not perfect, but they're the only option when you have large amounts of data. But they're only as good as their maintenance. Ric Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
RE: [expert] drakbackup
Actually they are meant for shipping drums (as in rock band) that we got from a garage sale. Used some shipping foam from a case of HDD's we bought (it holds HDD's individually and gives me slots I can label.) It's a real cludge but it works. We also use One of those fire and water proof safes that you buy at Office Depot or any other office supply store... They float sorta. James On Thu, 2003-02-06 at 04:48, Robert Wideman wrote: If I might add. If you use cases (and it's a good idea) make sure that they are fire and water proof... I just had some survers go under water and the backups survived because the cases where water tight. What kind of cases are you using? Rob __ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com -- James Sparenberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] drakbackup
civileme wrote: Well google around and you can find scdbackup which is oriented toward 650Mb disks. And I have tested it to work on 9.0 with supermount disabled, and a $25.95(US) CDRW drive which is rated 4x4x24 Even with that, the drive barfs on CDRW media, even for blanking, with 9.0 DO NOT USE CDRW media for this either--most of it is 650 and there are MANY supposed CDRW drives which will not work with CDRW media of the more modern flavor or insist on trying to treat all the CDRW media as 700Mb capacity. Civileme Interesting that you should mention this. I have been trying to backup a directory full of mp3 files to a CD-RW. They just REFUSE to write/recover properly. I can backup the rest of the system with no problem, but not those mp3's. IT may be yet another case of CD-RW problems.(?). I may try burning them to a CD-R ... But I've got a pile of coasters now... I will probably just invest in a spindle of 100 of them, get it over with. Also, I tried writing the latest beta iso to a CD-RW. But nooo.. The CD-RW drive is new, as are the disks. They burn ok, but if I move the CD to the other (older) drive, and try to boot the box from it.. No go. I can't even mount them on that drive. If I burn the ISOs to a CD-R, all works like it should. I bought the CD-RW's thinking Great for temp storage. But no.. I've had far too many problems with them. I wish I had my DAT Drive with me. Can't beat tape for backups. :) Sadly, it's in my server in Seattle, and I'm STILL stuck in Florida... sigh... Ric Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
RE: [expert] drakbackup
Also look at the media the drive supports. I had a SF 8x burner that was VERY specific on which it would burn on...not in the documentation. Though it was the 1st 8x burner out on consumer level in the US. Rob -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Tibbetts, Ric Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2003 8:11 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [expert] drakbackup civileme wrote: Well google around and you can find scdbackup which is oriented toward 650Mb disks. And I have tested it to work on 9.0 with supermount disabled, and a $25.95(US) CDRW drive which is rated 4x4x24 Even with that, the drive barfs on CDRW media, even for blanking, with 9.0 DO NOT USE CDRW media for this either--most of it is 650 and there are MANY supposed CDRW drives which will not work with CDRW media of the more modern flavor or insist on trying to treat all the CDRW media as 700Mb capacity. Civileme Interesting that you should mention this. I have been trying to backup a directory full of mp3 files to a CD-RW. They just REFUSE to write/recover properly. I can backup the rest of the system with no problem, but not those mp3's. IT may be yet another case of CD-RW problems.(?). I may try burning them to a CD-R ... But I've got a pile of coasters now... I will probably just invest in a spindle of 100 of them, get it over with. Also, I tried writing the latest beta iso to a CD-RW. But nooo.. The CD-RW drive is new, as are the disks. They burn ok, but if I move the CD to the other (older) drive, and try to boot the box from it.. No go. I can't even mount them on that drive. If I burn the ISOs to a CD-R, all works like it should. I bought the CD-RW's thinking Great for temp storage. But no.. I've had far too many problems with them. I wish I had my DAT Drive with me. Can't beat tape for backups. :) Sadly, it's in my server in Seattle, and I'm STILL stuck in Florida... sigh... Ric Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] drakbackup
On Wednesday 05 February 2003 05:11 am, Tibbetts, Ric wrote: civileme wrote: Well google around and you can find scdbackup which is oriented toward 650Mb disks. And I have tested it to work on 9.0 with supermount disabled, and a $25.95(US) CDRW drive which is rated 4x4x24 Even with that, the drive barfs on CDRW media, even for blanking, with 9.0 DO NOT USE CDRW media for this either--most of it is 650 and there are MANY supposed CDRW drives which will not work with CDRW media of the more modern flavor or insist on trying to treat all the CDRW media as 700Mb capacity. Civileme Interesting that you should mention this. I have been trying to backup a directory full of mp3 files to a CD-RW. They just REFUSE to write/recover properly. I can backup the rest of the system with no problem, but not those mp3's. IT may be yet another case of CD-RW problems.(?). I may try burning them to a CD-R ... But I've got a pile of coasters now... I will probably just invest in a spindle of 100 of them, get it over with. Also, I tried writing the latest beta iso to a CD-RW. But nooo.. The CD-RW drive is new, as are the disks. They burn ok, but if I move the CD to the other (older) drive, and try to boot the box from it.. No go. I can't even mount them on that drive. If I burn the ISOs to a CD-R, all works like it should. I bought the CD-RW's thinking Great for temp storage. But no.. I've had far too many problems with them. I wish I had my DAT Drive with me. Can't beat tape for backups. :) Sadly, it's in my server in Seattle, and I'm STILL stuck in Florida... sigh... Ric I will beat on tape for backup. MY tape drive faithfully backed up once a week and I rotated 6 tapes to stay current. (MAC fileserver 80). Then one day I arrived at work to find the fileserver unresponsive. I eventually powered down and found the disk would not boot and enough of it was corrupted to make the rest inaccessible. OK no problem, data is on tapes, let's reload OS--- done reach for tape Oops--tape is unreadable reach for two week old tape--E gee that one is no good either Tapes sent to data recovery service--well whattayaknow They charged quite a bit to give me the bad news that six years of work was lost. The employer was too cheap to give me a separate workstation, so it was my six years of work that was lost. For the same reason, it was risky to try restoring from tape though I had always done one file a month. Anyway, the tapes were stretched and dirty and the drive was unusable. I have been burning CDs since that time, even when the burns were at 1X. Civileme Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] drakbackup
On Wednesday 05 Feb 2003 5:17 pm, civileme wrote: I will beat on tape for backup. MY tape drive faithfully backed up once a week and I rotated 6 tapes to stay current. (MAC fileserver 80). Then one day I arrived at work to find the fileserver unresponsive. I eventually powered down and found the disk would not boot and enough of it was corrupted to make the rest inaccessible. OK no problem, data is on tapes, let's reload OS--- done reach for tape Oops--tape is unreadable reach for two week old tape--E gee that one is no good either Tapes sent to data recovery service--well whattayaknow They charged quite a bit to give me the bad news that six years of work was lost. The employer was too cheap to give me a separate workstation, so it was my six years of work that was lost. For the same reason, it was risky to try restoring from tape though I had always done one file a month. Anyway, the tapes were stretched and dirty and the drive was unusable. In our small company we did a fullbackup on Friday and incremental for the rest of the week. The software had tape rotation built into it, so it asked for a specific tape. The backup was, of course, always done when everyone closed down for the night, and there were very many times when I came in next morning to find that it hadn't been done, because the tape header was not readable, so it sat there waiting for a new tape. In the event, when we had a burglary the tape did restore, but I never really trusted it because of those problems. I used to save to LS120 disks and email myself files too big for that, just in case. I have been burning CDs since that time, even when the burns were at 1X. Talking of which - do you know any site with information on the different grades of media, with regard to lifespan. I'm careful with storage, but I'm aware that the media I'm using are not really suitable for longer storage. I just don't know how to choose the right ones. Anne -- Registered Linux User No.293302 Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] drakbackup
On Wed, Feb 05, 2003 at 19:08 +, Anne Wilson wrote: Talking of which - do you know any site with information on the different grades of media, with regard to lifespan. I'm careful with storage, but I'm aware that the media I'm using are not really suitable for longer storage. I just don't know how to choose the right ones. I don't have a link but there is one important factor: CDs also are vulnerable by wrong or careless handling. Don't ever touch the surface with your fingers because this leaves tiny fat particles. Store them in a dark room with medium temperature and low humidity. best bet were the cased media but I doubt there are any more drives for cased media. Only under these conditions you can think of real storage time like 10 years. I still have a set of 5.25 floppies with some dbaseIII data on them. They are still readable after 11 years due to good handling. Of course I have transferred the data to CD now but I'm just curious how long those floppies will last. wobo -- If you don't understand or are scared by any of the above ask your parents or an adult to help you. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] drakbackup
civileme wrote: Then one day I arrived at work to find the fileserver unresponsive. I eventually powered down and found the disk would not boot and enough of it was corrupted to make the rest inaccessible. OK no problem, data is on tapes, let's reload OS--- done reach for tape Oops--tape is unreadable reach for two week old tape--E gee that one is no good either Tapes sent to data recovery service--well whattayaknow They charged quite a bit to give me the bad news that six years of work was lost. That's what the verify feature of your backup program is there for. It take twice the time and it'll probably cause more wear and tear on the tape but at least you'll know the tape is readable. Bye -- Luca Olivetti Note.- This message reached you today, it may not tomorrow if you are using MAPS or other RBL. They arbitrarily IP addresses not related in any way to spam, disrupting Internet connectivity. See http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/05/21/1944247 and http://theory.whirlycott.com/~phil/antispam/rbl-bad/rbl-bad.html msg65640/pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [expert] drakbackup
On Wednesday 05 Feb 2003 9:48 pm, Luca Olivetti wrote: civileme wrote: Then one day I arrived at work to find the fileserver unresponsive. I eventually powered down and found the disk would not boot and enough of it was corrupted to make the rest inaccessible. OK no problem, data is on tapes, let's reload OS--- done reach for tape Oops--tape is unreadable reach for two week old tape--E gee that one is no good either Tapes sent to data recovery service--well whattayaknow They charged quite a bit to give me the bad news that six years of work was lost. That's what the verify feature of your backup program is there for. It take twice the time and it'll probably cause more wear and tear on the tape but at least you'll know the tape is readable. 'Fraid not. I was running backup with full verify, but it still didn't stop the drive from refusing the tape next time, saying it couldn't read it. And I was using good quality branded DAT tapes. Anne -- Registered Linux User No.293302 Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] drakbackup
Anne Wilson wrote: That's what the verify feature of your backup program is there for. It take twice the time and it'll probably cause more wear and tear on the tape but at least you'll know the tape is readable. 'Fraid not. I was running backup with full verify, but it still didn't stop the drive from refusing the tape next time, saying it couldn't read it. And I was using good quality branded DAT tapes. You just scared me to death. I had no problem reding the tapes to restore some files from time to time (when a user deleted them by mistake), but I guess murphy's law applies here: in case of disaster the tape won't be readable :-( Bye -- Luca Olivetti Note.- This message reached you today, it may not tomorrow if you are using MAPS or other RBL. They arbitrarily IP addresses not related in any way to spam, disrupting Internet connectivity. See http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/05/21/1944247 and http://theory.whirlycott.com/~phil/antispam/rbl-bad/rbl-bad.html msg65642/pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [expert] drakbackup
On Wed, 2003-02-05 at 14:00, Anne Wilson wrote: On Wednesday 05 Feb 2003 9:48 pm, Luca Olivetti wrote: civileme wrote: Then one day I arrived at work to find the fileserver unresponsive. I eventually powered down and found the disk would not boot and enough of it was corrupted to make the rest inaccessible. OK no problem, data is on tapes, let's reload OS--- done reach for tape Oops--tape is unreadable reach for two week old tape--E gee that one is no good either Tapes sent to data recovery service--well whattayaknow They charged quite a bit to give me the bad news that six years of work was lost. That's what the verify feature of your backup program is there for. It take twice the time and it'll probably cause more wear and tear on the tape but at least you'll know the tape is readable. 'Fraid not. I was running backup with full verify, but it still didn't stop the drive from refusing the tape next time, saying it couldn't read it. And I was using good quality branded DAT tapes. Anne After using and selling Enterprise IT products and services for nearly ten years, I do not trust any backup solution as far as I can throw the media. They all more or less suck, and exist purely to give a false sense of security and we did our due diligence to the purchaser. I use and recommend to those who ask for an honest opinion the Linus Torvalds backup strategy: Real men upload their important data to FTP servers and let the world download it. That doesn't mean to upload your corporate database, but it does mean to replicate the data to other locations and use hard disks. -- Jack Coates Monkeynoodle: A Scientific Venture... Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] drakbackup
From: Luca Olivetti [EMAIL PROTECTED] You just scared me to death. I had no problem reding the tapes to restore some files from time to time (when a user deleted them by mistake), but I guess murphy's law applies here: in case of disaster the tape won't be readable :-( Absolutely! That's the one thing you can be sure of. The tape always works, until the disaster. But the one time you realy need it, no go. It has happened to me too. Brian _ Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963 Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] drakbackup
On Wednesday 05 Feb 2003 10:16 pm, Jack Coates wrote: After using and selling Enterprise IT products and services for nearly ten years, I do not trust any backup solution as far as I can throw the media. They all more or less suck, and exist purely to give a false sense of security and we did our due diligence to the purchaser. I use and recommend to those who ask for an honest opinion the Linus Torvalds backup strategy: Real men upload their important data to FTP servers and let the world download it. That doesn't mean to upload your corporate database, but it does mean to replicate the data to other locations and use hard disks. My feelings exactly. I didn't have access to expensive high-tech equipment, but I did have more backups of one sort or another of everything that I considered important than you can believe. Everyone thought I was mad. Then one night, burglars struck. My backups worked. Ten days after the burglary, they struck again. My backups worked. Despite trying desperately to plug all possible ways of entrance, the next time they came they ram-raided the front door, and again took the file server and backup drive. My backups did work, even this time. And the upshot of that was that I was still able to get insurance, which I would not otherwise have got, I believe. Yet in spite of all that, I still could not bring myself to trust a system that rejected its own tapes with such regularity. Anne -- Registered Linux User No.293302 Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] drakbackup
On Wednesday 05 Feb 2003 10:39 pm, Anne Wilson wrote: Yet in spite of all that, I still could not bring myself to trust a system that rejected its own tapes with such regularity. I would just add that no-one laughed or complained again at my paranoid backup strategy. Anne -- Registered Linux User No.293302 Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] drakbackup
[cnip] I will beat on tape for backup. MY tape drive faithfully backed up once a week and I rotated 6 tapes to stay current. (MAC fileserver 80). This is how all tape backup sucks stories start. Then one day I arrived at work to find the fileserver unresponsive. I eventually powered down and found the disk would not boot and enough of it was corrupted to make the rest inaccessible. OK no problem, data is on tapes, let's reload OS--- done reach for tape Oops--tape is unreadable reach for two week old tape--E gee that one is no good either Tapes sent to data recovery service--well whattayaknow They charged quite a bit to give me the bad news that six years of work was lost. Someone didn't verify the backup, same problem can happen with a CD. You must verify the backup was good or the backup could be a waste. The employer was too cheap to give me a separate workstation, so it was my six years of work that was lost. For the same reason, it was risky to try restoring from tape though I had always done one file a month. Anyway, the tapes were stretched and dirty and the drive was unusable. Just like new CD's need to be bought for backups, new tapes must be also. I have been burning CDs since that time, even when the burns were at 1X. Civileme CD's (almost) are worthless for real backups. I backup around 300GB a night in just incrementals. Full backup is well over 3TB. CD's are fine for small data size backups, but that doesn't make tape backups bad. This is done with one tape robot, 2 drives, and amanda (only one drive is used right now because of a limitation in amanda). Once a Raid box died (one of the three power supplies caught on fire and burned up the disks). It happened at 6pm, we had everything back online from tape backup within 8 hours (with a spare Raid box). A total of 1.1TB of data was restored. Try doing that on CD! If each CD was 700MB how many CD's would I swap? well over 100. How long would it take todo a full backup to CD? A fellow Sysadmin backs up 3-5TB in incrementals a day. 8 drives in 2 cabnets with 2 robots. All tape. I know your talking about small backups when your say CD. However, if done properly, tape still wins. Such a small backup size can easily verify each tape for each backup. Before you start beating on tapes, use better procedures for your tape backup system. -- Bryan Whitehead SysAdmin - JPL - Interferometry Systems and Technology Phone: 818 354 2903 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] drakbackup
I'm a CPA in my real life and I decided to go with removable hard drives for our office network. I just setup a mandrake server and use samba to backup up the NT fileserver right on to the removable hard drive. I have a set of shell scripts that mount the NT fileserver directories and cron runs it everynight at 11pm. It does about 3GBs of data. Then I shutdown and swap hard drive so I have a drive rotated offsite to my house. I usually swap hard drives every few days. I have the mandrake server running headless and use SSH to access it from home or from my windows 2k desktop at work. For a small network like mine it is so easy to setup and run. Robert Barry __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
[expert] drakbackup
Hey all, I've been trying to use drakbackup with both cdr's and rw's but I get FATAL: Does not appear to be recordable media! with both. I'm able to burn a disk with cdrecord - just drakbackup fails. Any suggestions? Thanks! Mike -- Michael Holt Banning, CA(o_ [EMAIL PROTECTED](o_ (o_ //\ www.holt-tech.net(/)_ (/)_ V_/_www.mandrake.com Bad or missing mouse driver. Spank the cat? (Y/N) Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
[expert] drakbackup
Well google around and you can find scdbackup which is oriented toward 650Mb disks. And I have tested it to work on 9.0 with supermount disabled, and a $25.95(US) CDRW drive which is rated 4x4x24 Even with that, the drive barfs on CDRW media, even for blanking, with 9.0 DO NOT USE CDRW media for this either--most of it is 650 and there are MANY supposed CDRW drives which will not work with CDRW media of the more modern flavor or insist on trying to treat all the CDRW media as 700Mb capacity. Civileme Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] drakbackup
5:42pm, civileme mused: Well google around and you can find scdbackup which is oriented toward 650Mb disks. And I have tested it to work on 9.0 with supermount disabled, and a $25.95(US) CDRW drive which is rated 4x4x24 Even with that, the drive barfs on CDRW media, even for blanking, with 9.0 DO NOT USE CDRW media for this either--most of it is 650 and there are MANY supposed CDRW drives which will not work with CDRW media of the more modern flavor or insist on trying to treat all the CDRW media as 700Mb capacity. Civileme Is this something mdk specific or is it just a feature not available to the linux community yet? RW's have been out so long, I just assumed that the technology had been stablized by now. Thanks Civileme! Mike -- Michael Holt Banning, CA(o_ [EMAIL PROTECTED](o_ (o_ //\ www.holt-tech.net(/)_ (/)_ V_/_www.mandrake.com Bad or missing mouse driver. Spank the cat? (Y/N) Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] drakbackup
On Monday 03 February 2003 07:28 pm, Michael Holt wrote: 5:42pm, civileme mused: Well google around and you can find scdbackup which is oriented toward 650Mb disks. And I have tested it to work on 9.0 with supermount disabled, and a $25.95(US) CDRW drive which is rated 4x4x24 Even with that, the drive barfs on CDRW media, even for blanking, with 9.0 DO NOT USE CDRW media for this either--most of it is 650 and there are MANY supposed CDRW drives which will not work with CDRW media of the more modern flavor or insist on trying to treat all the CDRW media as 700Mb capacity. Civileme Is this something mdk specific or is it just a feature not available to the linux community yet? RW's have been out so long, I just assumed that the technology had been stablized by now. Thanks Civileme! Mike Umm, I just moved the Acer Drive to my son's computer (he uses the unmentionable system in its latest incarnation) and it behaves the same--choking on CDRW disks, so I imagine it is unresolved hardware issues with the druive hardware and the brand of media (one style did not throttle the drive) So it aint even linux-specific Just one of those things that you never know til you test. I have a Wearnes 4x2x24 that works acceptably and a no-name that does 700Mb media perfectly either CD-R or CDRW, but won't touch 650s at all and it is rated 40x12x48 (and that one made me a religious buyer of very cheap CD-Rs cause backing up a 40G disk using it is not a wasted day) as to the quality of drakbackup, I cannot speak because I have been using scdbackup since 1999, but I do know that it works better with supermount disabled. (MOF, with supermount enabled, I can crash the kernel with a dd from CD to floppy). That might be the mandrake specific issue you seek. Civileme Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] drakbackup
On Mon, 2003-02-03 at 22:07, civileme wrote: On Monday 03 February 2003 07:28 pm, Michael Holt wrote: 5:42pm, civileme mused: Well google around and you can find scdbackup which is oriented toward 650Mb disks. And I have tested it to work on 9.0 with supermount disabled, and a $25.95(US) CDRW drive which is rated 4x4x24 Even with that, the drive barfs on CDRW media, even for blanking, with 9.0 DO NOT USE CDRW media for this either--most of it is 650 and there are MANY supposed CDRW drives which will not work with CDRW media of the more modern flavor or insist on trying to treat all the CDRW media as 700Mb capacity. Civileme Is this something mdk specific or is it just a feature not available to the linux community yet? RW's have been out so long, I just assumed that the technology had been stablized by now. Thanks Civileme! Mike Umm, I just moved the Acer Drive to my son's computer (he uses the unmentionable system in its latest incarnation) and it behaves the same--choking on CDRW disks, so I imagine it is unresolved hardware issues with the druive hardware and the brand of media (one style did not throttle the drive) So it aint even linux-specific Just one of those things that you never know til you test. I have a Wearnes 4x2x24 that works acceptably and a no-name that does 700Mb media perfectly either CD-R or CDRW, but won't touch 650s at all and it is rated 40x12x48 (and that one made me a religious buyer of very cheap CD-Rs cause backing up a 40G disk using it is not a wasted day) Civileme this brings to mind what I'm trying to instill in my dev teams now. If you say Nobody will.. somebody always does. They Said nobody will ever want a 650MB blank when 700MB blanks exist... and I'd be willing to be that the firmware assumes 700 because it was easier and faster to write. (BTW it's nice to see your sig on the list again.) James as to the quality of drakbackup, I cannot speak because I have been using scdbackup since 1999, but I do know that it works better with supermount disabled. (MOF, with supermount enabled, I can crash the kernel with a dd from CD to floppy). That might be the mandrake specific issue you seek. Civileme Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] drakbackup
9:07pm, civileme mused: Umm, I just moved the Acer Drive to my son's computer (he uses the unmentionable system in its latest incarnation) and it behaves the same--choking on CDRW disks, so I imagine it is unresolved hardware issues with the druive hardware and the brand of media (one style did not throttle the drive) So it aint even linux-specific Just one of those things that you never know til you test. I have a Wearnes 4x2x24 that works acceptably and a no-name that does 700Mb media perfectly either CD-R or CDRW, but won't touch 650s at all and it is rated 40x12x48 (and that one made me a religious buyer of very cheap CD-Rs cause backing up a 40G disk using it is not a wasted day) as to the quality of drakbackup, I cannot speak because I have been using scdbackup since 1999, but I do know that it works better with supermount disabled. (MOF, with supermount enabled, I can crash the kernel with a dd from CD to floppy). That might be the mandrake specific issue you seek. Civileme Well I guess that about does it then - I'm off to check out scd. Nothing ever seems to be simple these days :-) Thanks for the replies! Mike p.s. I know someone who can perform an exorcism on your son's computer if you like! :-) -- Michael Holt Banning, CA(o_ [EMAIL PROTECTED](o_ (o_ //\ www.holt-tech.net(/)_ (/)_ V_/_www.mandrake.com Bad or missing mouse driver. Spank the cat? (Y/N) Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
