[ale] The importance of regular backups - AKA: The ALE list's getting a blast from the past

[Derek Atkins]

Jim,

On Thu, January 24, 2019 11:11 am, Jim Kinney wrote:
> Used to be an automated backup until my (stupidly overpriced) robotic
> LTO3 tape system died. SWMBO has vehemently vetoed any more funding for
> hardware. Keeps muttering about "the other stuff you're supposed to be
> doing", and "fix the house first".
> Fix the house first is at least a 2 year, full-time, 40+ hours per
> week process :-(

I meant automated testing of mailman config, not automated backups. ;)

Me, I have automated backups via rdiff-backup.  I back up every night, and
save my incrementals for 1 year.  But of course it would be nice to have a
secondary service be able to flag me and say "hey, bozo, X stopped
working".  I haven't set up a NAGIOS yet although it's on my to-do list.

Granted, my backups are to spinning rust (FreeNAS, zraid2), not tape, and
currently not offsite.  I need to work on that, too, but I, too, have
real-life projects that need to come first.

-derek

> On Thu, 2019-01-24 at 09:09 -0500, Derek Atkins via Ale wrote:
>> Thanks, and here I was hoping there was an automated method.  But
>> goodto know!
>> Thanks,
>> -derek
>> Robert Tweedy <robert at robert-tweedy.com> writes:
>> > Derek,
>> > I'd tried to access the list's management page Friday night
>> > (wasoriginally investigating why the list had suddenly been quiet
>> > allweek) and was greeted with a Mailman "you've hit a bug"
>> > errorpage. After checking the logs on the server ALE's running on,
>> > I sawthat it complained about the config.pck file being unreadable
>> > ormissing; when I went to investigate the file itself, I saw that
>> > it andthe config.pck.last files had a size of 0 and a creation date
>> > ofJanuary 13th indicating that they'd somehow been
>> > corrupted/deleted andre-created with no contents.
>> > -Robert
>> >
>> >  ---- On Mon, 21 Jan 2019 15:04:19 -0500 Derek Atkins<
>> > derek at ihtfp.com> wrote ---- > Robert,  >   > Robert Tweedy via Ale
>> > <ale at ale.org> writes:  >   > > Hi all,  > >  > > The ALE mailing
>> > list's "config.pck" file corrupted over the weekend  > > and wasn't
>> > noticed until this evening. This file contains basically  >   > I'm
>> > curious -- how did you notice that it got corrupted?  >   >
>> > -derek  >   > --   >        Derek Atkins                 617-623-
>> > 3745  >        derek at ihtfp.com             www.ihtfp.com  >
>> > Computer and Internet Security Consultant  >
>> >
>> >
>> >
> --
> James P. Kinney III
>
> Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you
> gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his
> own tail. It won't fatten the dog.
> - Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain
>
> http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/
>
>


-- 
       Derek Atkins                 617-623-3745
       derek at ihtfp.com             www.ihtfp.com
       Computer and Internet Security Consultant