[ale] Help with data recovery
Jim Kinney
jim.kinney at gmail.com
Mon Aug 24 17:32:37 EDT 2020
Probably not saying anything not already well known:
Don't trust a thumb drive for back ups. Those devices are modern sneakernet transport only.
On August 24, 2020 5:29:23 PM EDT, Jim Ransone via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
>(Possibly) success!!!! I tried a couple older passwords that I used to
>use
>on everything before I learned that you shouldn't use the same
>passwords on
>everything. One of them worked! I am still using the old spare laptop
>and
>putting the restored files on the same 4TB backup drive with the
>encrypted
>backup files. At the rate this is going, it will take a few hours to
>finish. Then hopefully I will have unencrypted files that I can just
>copy
>to my main laptop.
>
>Here's what's weird. I had a text file with all my passwords. The
>password
>I had listed for Deja Dup was NOT the password that worked. I am
>thinking
>that maybe (I could be misremembering some details) what happened was:
>
>- I did a full backup of the home directory before I upgraded from
>Ubuntu
>Studio 18.04 to 20.04.
>
>- The upgrade installer gave the option of not erasing the home
>directory,
>so I never needed to restore it from the backup drive.
>
>- But I had to reinstall the Deja Dup application, so it lost my
>password
>and asked me to create a new one the next time I used it, which I did,
>and
>added to my password text file.
>
>- Then, in anticipation of reinstalling Ubuntu Studio 20.04 (which I
>did to
>try to fix my audio issues,) I did an incremental backup.
>
>- Result: Now the latest incremental backup has a different password
>from
>the previous backups.
>
>Let me know if you guys think this is a plausible explanation. If I am
>correct, I'm guessing that what will be restored is everything except
>what
>was backed up since upgrading from 18.04 to 20.04. A much smaller
>bummer
>than losing everything since December of 2016!!
>
>Jim
>
>On Mon, Aug 24, 2020, 4:19 PM Jim Ransone <jim.ransone at gmail.com>
>wrote:
>
>> Much thanks to everyone for the suggestions and advice so far! Here
>is an
>> update:
>>
>> I have attempted to duplicate the entire scenario on an older spare
>laptop.
>>
>> - I installed the same OS - Ubuntu Studio 20.04.
>> - I created a folder and filled it with a handful of files.
>> - I used Deja Dup to back up the folder onto a usb flash drive.
>(Didn't
>> want to risk doing something weird to my actual backup drive.) Was
>asked to
>> create a password.
>> - Reinstalled Ubuntu Studio 20.04 with the same settings as before
>> (erasing everything.)
>> - Reinstalled Deja Dup.
>> - Used Deja Dup with the password to successfully restore the backup.
>>
>> This indicates to me that you are right, Bob. The password was the
>> password. There is no other key that's being created and stored
>somewhere.
>> It also would seem to indicate that the password is somewhere on the
>backup
>> drive, but I don't have any idea where on the drive that would be.
>>
>> So either I am misremembering the original password, as you
>suggested,
>> Bob, or there is some other issue. I have seen comments online about
>a bug
>> that cause it to sometimes fail to store the key.
>>
>> Jim
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Aug 24, 2020, 3:51 PM DJ-Pfulio via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
>>
>>> If you have backups, but have never attempted to restore them onto a
>new
>>> system, you don't actually have any backups. You have "hope and
>prayers."
>>> We know how well that works.
>>>
>>> IT pros get called into clients all the time where they've been
>doing
>>> backups for years, but never tested them. Turns out all that time
>and
>>> effort was useless because of some small issue. Corruption, constant
>>> failures the last 5 yrs, missing encryption key, so key part of the
>data
>>> not included in the stored backups. There's always something.
>Always.
>>>
>>> If you've never tested the restore for your backups, in a clean-room
>>> environment, then it is highly, likely that they won't work.
>>>
>>> Of course, if you have the money and time to clone 50 HDDs to have
>50
>>> backup versions, fantastic. 1 copy is great, but what happens if a
>file
>>> gets malware and nobody notices for 60 days? 120 days - 180 days of
>>> versioned backups are pretty easy and really don't take much
>storage.
>>>
>>> Cloning is the brute force backup method. Extremely wasteful and
>>> unnecessary for Unix systems. I'd love to know how to have 180 days
>of
>>> cloned storage for high risk systems. Whereas versioned backups for
>the
>>> email gateway here are:
>>> Time Size Cumulative size
>>>
>>>
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> Sun Aug 23 01:30:02 2020 63.1 MB 63.1 MB
>(current
>>> mirror)
>>> Sat Aug 22 01:30:02 2020 1.86 KB 63.1 MB
>>> Fri Aug 21 01:30:02 2020 496 bytes 63.1 MB
>>> Thu Aug 20 01:30:02 2020 895 bytes 63.1 MB
>>> ...
>>> Wed Apr 29 01:30:02 2020 788 bytes 63.4 MB
>>> Tue Apr 28 16:27:34 2020 744 bytes 63.4 MB
>>> Mon Apr 27 01:30:02 2020 11.6 KB 63.4 MB
>>> Sun Apr 26 01:30:02 2020 866 bytes 63.4 MB
>>>
>>> That system uses:
>>> $ df -hT
>>> Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
>>> /dev/vda1 ext4 8.8G 4.3G 4.1G 52% /
>>>
>>> Why backup 4G when 64MB will do? Just sayin'.
>>>
>>> On 8/24/20 2:45 PM, Jim Ransone via Ale wrote:
>>> > David, thanks for the advice!
>>> >
>>> > Bob, does "single key" mean that my password is the key itself?
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > On Mon, Aug 24, 2020, 2:23 PM Bob via Ale <ale at ale.org <mailto:
>>> ale at ale.org>> wrote:
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > From ddging it looks like Deja Dup uses a single key
>(symmetric
>>> cipher).
>>> >
>>> > The OP wrote: "I tried the password and it acted busy for a
>little
>>> > while and then asked for the password again. Not sure what
>that
>>> means."
>>> >
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>>>
>>
--
"no government by experts in which the masses do not have the chance to inform the experts as to their needs can be anything but an oligarchy managed in the interests of the few.” - John Dewey
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