[ale] almost OT: Unix Recovery Legend

[Scott Castaline]

On 11/22/2011 10:47 AM, Lightner, Jeff wrote:
>
> Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.
>
> Years ago I got sent to a site running an AT&T 3B2 400 and was told it 
> was completely down so I’d need to reload it. I was also told they had 
> no backup tapes so we’d have to configure it like a new server. Never 
> having actually installed a 3B2 400 I was not really sure how to do 
> that but I took the AT&T manuals and some media along with me.
>
> The first thing I noticed when I got to the site was that the console 
> was sitting at a login prompt. I found it let me login as root. 
> Clearly someone had removed many of the files (all of our proprietary 
> software and the sites data) along with a few other things..
>
> The second thing I discovered while looking to see if they had a 
> recent data backup was that they in fact had a root (/) and a /usr 
> (where our software lived) backup tapes buried in a box of tapes even 
> though they’d told us they didn’t have such tapes. I quickly restore / 
> and /usr then found the most recent data tape (which by then was a day 
> old) and restored it.
>
> Within about an hour of arriving on site I had the system up and 
> running. The site had to re-input the last day’s data by hand but even 
> at that they treated me like a hero because prior to my arrival our 
> management had advised them they’d be down for at least 2-3 days for 
> the rebuild then would have to re-input most of the data for the 
> current year to get back to where they’d been.
>
> P.S. Whoever invented CTCCPIO for the 3B2 400 should have been shot. 
> That wasn’t compatible with any other backup/restore utility. 
> Switching sites over to 3B2 600 or 1000 by doing a uucp over serial 
> was NOT what you call “fast”.
>
yeah, but if you were payed hourly with overtime rates, what a paycheck!
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *From:*ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] *On Behalf Of 
> *Rich Faulkner
> *Sent:* Tuesday, November 22, 2011 10:13 AM
> *To:* Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
> *Subject:* Re: [ale] almost OT: Unix Recovery Legend
>
> Never seen that before. That's totally awesome! Thanks for sharing........
>
>
> On Tue, 2011-11-22 at 09:53 -0500, Boris Borisov wrote:
>
>   
> http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/hack/recovery.html  <http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/%7Eelf/hack/recovery.html>
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