Done yesterday (20110730 Sa)

[mdlbear]

0730 Sa
  * up 7:45; W=196.2; drugs, nose, teeth, laundry, dishes, light
  : Crap.  rsync does *not* go back and re-link files that are already there.
    Which should have been obvious.  OTOH the last sync finished ok, so this
    should be fixable.   Or would be if the damned thing would stay up.
  : Current plan of record is to restore home and mm (fixing all links at the
    top level), then delete 200* and do a full restore in the right order.
    But meanwhile, the new disk will be usable for backups if remounted.
  * renewed AAA membership (online, set up for auto. renewal.)
  ~ get van checked out for trips -> would need more service
  * paid bills  Terminix, SW visa.
  * cleaned heads on ij; need to print a test page or something at least every
    couple of days.
  ~ Liz and Og coming around noon -> 
  * delete 2* on backup disk, which took several hours and salvaged ~400GB
  * rewire trantor for gigabit ethernet.
  * after trying to simply re-order the args to rsync, move 20* to a new
    directory called zrchive.  Will have to fix scripts eventually, but for
    now a symlink will work.  That, finally, does the trick.
  @ Best Comic Ever: The Scientific Process » Sociological Images (firecat)
  $ personal use: $10 donation to  (ysabetwordsmith)
  * fix backup-funcs to account for ARCHIVE=$BAK/zrchive
  * finally!  transfer done, ~7:30pm
    /dev/sdb5 1349854392 512475560  768810204 40% /mnt
    /dev/sdb5 1840289028 513230116 1233577592 30% /media/bak 
  * trantor didn't take kindly to hot-unplugging the old backup drive, so
    that's best reserved for emergencies.  Shut down, disk removed.
    Apparently hotplug support depends on both the controller and driver.
  % right side of my neck, lower jaw, shoulder hurt like heck.
    have taken naproxen, methocarbamol
  ~ switch backup drive to eSATA -> hotswap.  -May- need to replace the drive.
  * backup drive now installed in locking hot-swap rack on nova.
  @ gluten-free crepes
  % 10:15 sleepy.  A little of the edge is off the neck pain.
  x see whether Fry's still has that Silverstone case - would work for Nova
    -> otoh, don't need it and the case I have has room for more drives.
  * hot bath helped.  Splat.

Well. I seem to have spent almost the whole day with pain in my right shoulder and the right side of my neck, finishing up the file transfer from my old, flaky backup drive to the nice shiny new one. Finally got it right.

geeky details:

It seems that rsync sorts its arguments, and transfers files and directories in that order, top down. It preserves hard links, but only to files it's already seen. I build my archive using cp -H, which makes new directories but makes hard links to files instead of copying them.

But I wanted to transfer the top-level backup directories, home, users, etc., first so that I'd have them if something flaked out, and have them in place as soon as possible so I could get back to making nightly backups.

So in order to make things sort correctly, the right thing to do was to take the archive directories, with names like 2007, and move them all to a directory called zrchive.

Q.E.F.

Anyway, my history (back to 2007) has been preserved, and I have the new one installed on nova in a nice new quick-swap rack.

And I still have a pain in the neck. Not for too long, hopefully.

Only two links, but they're good ones. Go look in the notes.