-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 05/24/07 08:47, Douglas Allan Tutty wrote: > On Wed, May 23, 2007 at 10:49:51PM -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: >> On 05/23/07 20:17, Douglas Allan Tutty wrote: >>> On Wed, May 23, 2007 at 07:05:23PM -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: >>> >>>>> It would be very nice if there was a universal cross-platform rw + >>>>> encrypt filesystem for archives. Something that you could be confident >>>>> that you could decrypt and access in 10 years using whatever OS was >>>>> current then. >>>> tar is cross-platform, as is ASCII CSV. PGP/GPG is also cross-platform. > >>> I don't know if a generic tarball I make today will be readable by >>> whatever OS in 10 years, which is why I store a current install cd. In >>> 10 years, hopefully I can find a computer that will boot it. >> You've got bigger problems if you think that a CD-R will keep it's >> integrity for 10 years. > > No. I figure a CD is good for at least a year. Every year, I > pull the two netinst cds from the bank, take an SHA hash and compare it > with the written notes, then run something like cdck on them. So far, > my Woody CDs are fine. Funny enough, so is my woody floppy set (the > whole shebang set of 20 floppies) on Maxell floppies; needed for my 486 > that doesn't boot from CD or run an installer after woody's. > >> Tape (using tar, and a media used by "large data processing shops", >> since they are supported for a LONG LONG LONG time, unlike that gee >> whiz specialized crap that NASA seems to love) or SCSI hard drives >> (in external enclosures so you can spin them up annually) formatted >> ext2 or FAT32 are what I would choose. >> > > Would you use tar to make a tarball and put it on a hard drive formatted > ext2, copy as is to ext2 (changing ctime in the process), or forgo a > filesystem and write tar directly to the raw disk?
Copy a (possibly compressed) tarball to an ext2 volume. That way, you could have multiple timestamped or "different project" tarballs on the same device. > What tar format > would you use: GNU or Posix? Good question. GNU tar does Posix. I'd have to research the differences between the two formats. >> FAT has been around for 26+ years, and ext2 is 14 years old. >> > > Which is more resistant to bad blocks popping up after time in storage? Are either? Maybe you'd also have to create PAR2 (forward error correction) files. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAR2 >>> If I gpg a tarball today with whatever algorithm is current, in 10 years >>> that algorithm may be long cracked. Will the gpg authors keep support >>> for it? Perhaps. >> This is FLOSS. Save the source on a separate disk with SHA512 hash >> codes. > >> And text is *the* guaranteed data format. Database backups should >> be text format extracts and "Office" documents should be in ODF >> format which is just zipped text. > > Never heard of ODF, or is it specific to *Office programmes? > Personally, I save my latex as latex. The origional contents are > plainly visible. Never heard of ODF???? It's the OpenOffice.org 2.0 document format, aka OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications, ISO/IEC 26300:2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument >>> accessible? Perhaps the time capsule would have to include a whole >>> computer and not just the archive media. >> Yes. If by computer you also mean "the whole schmeer, including >> many tape drives" since it's common on Big Systems to backup a >> single database in parallel to multiple tape drive. > > Computers keep getting smaller. Computer could mean a little brick that > has an interface for the archive drive, the archive drive unit, and some > kind of user interface. RS-232C has been around for ever; will it be > around for evermore? If the backup medium was hard disks, then an > interface for the hard drive plus an enclosure for the drives if the > brick didn't have the pysical space. If you did that in 1990, you'd have put in an ISA controller. Five years ago, it would have been a PATA drive. All these issues just go to show how difficult the subject of digital archiving is. - -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good! -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFGVcVTS9HxQb37XmcRArS1AJ9tthx04o3J8O/QI2X7jBSVphaWQQCdFFou 6+zW4Gjqbk/m1L3R2ZrBEAQ= =JGee -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
