On 11/21/2016 01:42 PM, George N. White III wrote:
On Mon, Nov 21, 2016 at 12:59 PM, Robert Moskowitz <r...@htt-consult.com <mailto:r...@htt-consult.com>> wrote:



    On 11/21/2016 09:20 AM, Matthew Miller wrote:

        On Mon, Nov 21, 2016 at 08:21:01AM -0500, Robert Moskowitz wrote:

            I have a 1TB drive that is getting I/O  errors enough that
            while I
            What is a good way to move the OS and all the data? I used
            Clonezilla some many years ago, but that does not seem to
            be the way
            to go when there are bad sections on the source drive?

        Not helpful _now_, but consider making sure you have backups
        once you
        start using the new system. Then, next time this happens, forget
        worrying about transferring from a failing drive and just
        restore your
        backup.


    The data is backed up.  In fact it was one of the rsync cron tasks
    that wedged the system while I was gone.  The I/O did not seem to
    be in the data, but perhaps some temp or other storage needed.


Backups should periodically read the entire disk, so may encounter bad sectors in areas that are not often read in normal operation. Backups that take
too long to run are often the first indication of a failing disk.


    The challenge is the OS and software configs.  Actually the system
    is a ClearOS file server and there are all those config
    information scattered around by ClearOS.  I back up the whole
    /var/flexshare, but there is a lot more to their setup and no
    'clear' directions from them. Building a new server from scratch
    would be painful. Last year (when I had time while building up my
    contract work) I looked into building my own Samba 4 server, but
    dropped it.  Anyway, I have yet to find directions on a good way
    to maintain a running backup of the OS for a straight rebuild.


After many experiences with having to reinstall the OS in order to install the backup client needed to restore user data, I make it a practice to keep a
base OS with current updates handy.

How does on 'backup the entire disk' and/or build a 'base OS with current updates'? Can you point me to some guidance?

thanks

Without that I end up reinstalling the OS and then doing multiple updates. If you do a few updates a week and hit a problem then it usually isn't hard to figure out which package caused the issue, but on a system that has been in service for a few years with 100's updates, getting form a fresh install from the original media back to an up-to-date running system may not be easy. With systems that don't have restrictive licenses, you can just dd the base system to a fresh disk, change the system name and add the user(s), then install the backup client, restore the user data, and reinstall end-user applications.

ddrescue often recovers nearly all the files, so even if the resulting image isn't fully working you may be able to recover most of the configuration data.


        If this is a desktop system with room for it, consider buying
        *two*
        drives and mirroring them. That's not a backup (since errors and
        mistakes get propagated instantly, and because it's in the same
        physical location), but makes situations like this rare (at
        least, if
        you replace as soon as you start seeing errors instead of
        waiting for a
        double failure).


    I could never figure out what mirroring failing sectors meant.


Not sure of the context, but the first sign of a failing disk is often a massive decrease in performance which I'm told is due to multiple re-reads of a sector. When a sector shows signs of failing, disk firmware copies the data to a spare sector. If the new disk doesn't arrive quickly you then see disk failure with a code that translates to "no spare sectors left
on device".


George N. White III <aa...@chebucto.ns.ca <mailto:aa...@chebucto.ns.ca>>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia


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