[ale] Help with data recovery

[Jim Kinney]

Ok. Last thing on this and I'll shut up.

No matter what the back up tool chain being used, spend some time at least bi-monthly doing a restore just to keep in practice. I can count the number of times a failure requiring file recovery was more relaxed than "OH MY GOD GET THAT DIRECTORY RECOVERED FASTER THAN THE ELECTRONS CAN MOVE IN THE WIRES!!!!" Yeah. Exactly zero. That's a skill to pull out that just screams  "I am god and I will be getting a pay raise starting tomorrow". Especially when it's the CFO who blew away the accounting folder.

On August 24, 2020 5:32:00 PM EDT, Jim Ransone <jim.ransone at gmail.com> wrote:
>Advice heeded!
>
>On Mon, Aug 24, 2020, 5:30 PM Jim Kinney via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
>
>> What JD is saying here while being a bit obtuse is:
>>
>> Don't trust a computer with anything that really matters. Very, very,
>very
>> few processes are hammered so well they are guaranteed to work (NASA
>is the
>> only one I've ever heard of coming close).
>>
>> On August 24, 2020 3:51:05 PM EDT, 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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-- 
"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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