From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Apr 1 01:18:30 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 36C9916A4CE for ; Fri, 1 Apr 2005 01:18:30 +0000 (GMT) Received: from mail1.acecape.com (mail1.acecape.com [66.114.74.12]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A46E143D1D for ; Fri, 1 Apr 2005 01:18:29 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from lists@natserv.com) Received: from zoraida.natserv.net (p65-147.acedsl.com [66.114.65.147]) by mail1.acecape.com (8.12.11/8.12.11) with ESMTP id j311ISui007044; Thu, 31 Mar 2005 20:18:28 -0500 Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2005 20:21:48 -0500 (EST) From: Francisco Reyes X-X-Sender: fran@zoraida.natserv.net To: Andrea Venturoli In-Reply-To: <424CA2B9.1030304@netfence.it> Message-ID: <20050331201415.H37149@zoraida.natserv.net> References: <424AACD1.3060802@netfence.it> <20050330134259.GA66640@xor.obsecurity.org> <424AE8FA.8080306@netfence.it><424CA2B9.1030304@netfence.it> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: mksnap_ffs woes X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 01 Apr 2005 01:18:30 -0000 On Fri, 1 Apr 2005, Andrea Venturoli wrote: > Replacing the software would mean replacing the hardware (not only the PCs, > but the attached machines too) at multiple sites, which would mean a HUGE > amount of money; that's behind my power and is to be considered out of > question. Not necessarily true. How about a web application? This would mean that the machines would only need to be able to run a web browser. IF they are very old you could install FreeBSD on them. Even a 200MHZ machine can run FreeBSD semi decently with X on it. > It's some bunch of DBFs with associated indexes If you give me the extensions I can take a reasonable guess at what they are. You CAN copy them. You just need to write a simple program to open them and copy them. Should be near trivial once you have whatever they used. > Given the clients need to be up 24/7, I though of filesystem snapshots as the > only solution. With DBFs that won't work. You will very likely have corrupted headers if you do a copy/sync/snapshot depending on how busy your system is and how often writes are done to it. > I'll keep trying a bit more, since it seems doing them on a daily schedule > doesn't do any harm. The problems so far have only arisen when I manually > started a backup script (possibly interrupting it, cleaning up, and starting > again). And you say this system is 24/7? DBFs are not exactly very good at this.. specially if you have many deletes. Is this mostly a read only or write once only type of system? > P.S. The firm who sold that crap, also implemented the file server before > mine; just without any RAID and/or backup facility. These data are vital to > that business. Many times it's a matter of how much a client wants to pay. On the last server I setup given the option of getting a RAID controller (IDE) for under $200 the client said no. You can only educate and advice a client so much if they are not willing to listen. The cost of unforseen crashes is usually far off in a small business owner's mind. -- http://stringsutils.com Utility for developers. Compute length, MD5, CRC and more.