[ale] Hard Lessons - was Re: how do I list big files

[Lightner, Jeff]

A former employer's clients all had UPS setups at install to guard
against power loss.   The clients were supposed to periodically print
"emergency reports" so they'd have some up to date info in the even the
server went down for any reason so they could manually do things for
their customers.   More than one of these clients decided they didn't
want to waste the paper so instead plugged a printer into the UPS.   We
usually found out they'd done that when they'd call in an complain how
the computer "crashed" during a power outage and they decided that was
the right moment to print the reports.

 

________________________________

From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of Jim
Kinney
Sent: Tuesday, March 22, 2011 11:37 AM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
Subject: Re: [ale] Hard Lessons - was Re: how do I list big files

 

heh, heh. Many years back I started a complicated scp process between
several remote machines from my home office. I went and reloaded the
coffee cup and then proceeded to stub my toe on the UPS power switch on
the way back to happy geek remote control nirvana. In the microseconds
it took for all the power to drain from all the devices, main linux box,
monitor, ISDN modem, and for the depth of horror I had just created for
myself to sink in, I could see the need for a protective cover over the
power switch much like the springloaded box that protects the EPO switch
in a data canter.

On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 11:00 AM, Ron Frazier
<atllinuxenthinfo at c3energy.com> wrote:

Been there, done that, except for the 5 years part.  I have my desktop
PC attached to a 750 VA UPS, which says 15 minutes run time on the box.
Well, AT THIS LOAD level, the run time on that battery is 3 minutes,
which I didn't know because I had fallen for the market speak on the
box.  I happily pulled the plug, then nearly fainted as the PC abruptly
lost power after 3 - 4 minutes.

My favorite backup is a cloned hard drive, which I can swap around in
two minutes.  Didn't know that, didn't have that at the time.  I did
have an image backup, but it was about a month old.  I had to restore
Windows AND Linux (dual boot), and then recover data from an online
backup and resetup everything within the last month.  So, my simple
happy UPS test turned into a long grumpy sad 2 day system building
exercise.  NOT FUN!

I learned a valuable and painful lesson.  That is that you have to
customize the UPS settings to the situation.  If I let the computer
drain this particular battery to 10%, or even 1%, which I think Gnome
defaults to, it would literally have only 5 - 10 seconds to shut down.
This is not enough time, even for Linux.  I set my Windows UPS controls
on that machine to warn me at battery level of 85%, which is about 36
seconds into the power failure.  Then, I set it to shut down at 70%
battery level, which is about 1.1 minutes into the power failure.  At
least, this way, it will have about 2.5 minutes to complete the
shutdown, and it stands a fighting chance.

I still haven't figured out to control the shutdown settings in the
Gnome power manager.  I don't think you can.

Sincerely,

Ron



On 03/22/2011 10:00 AM, Jim Kinney wrote: 

"hard" is when you have to do the first test of the recovery system:
make backup, pull the plug, restore from bare iron 5 years worth of
critical data.

On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 9:31 AM, Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:

"Lightner, Jeff" <jlightner at water.com> writes:

> What is scary is there are still people today who don't see the need
for
> regular backups until something goes belly up on them.

coming up with a backup system is *hard*
implementing it is even harder.

-derek
--
      Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
      Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
      URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
      warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available

 





-- 
 
(PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
call on the phone.  I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy
mailing lists and such.  I don't always see new messages very quickly.)
 
Ron Frazier
 
770-205-9422 (O)   Leave a message.
linuxdude AT c3energy.com


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-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
I would rather stumble along in freedom than walk effortlessly in
chains.
 
Proud partner. Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
 
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