State of the IWETHEY

Post #299,208 by malraux 11/8/08 3:42:13 PM 11/8/08 3:44:51 PM Reply	State of the IWETHEY Here's the issue: The drive that had the database on it scrambled the filesystem. Yes, I have backups, but the local backup drive with the copy on it decided to die at the same time. Bad luck, and unfortunate. The most recent backup of the entire system that I have is from Dec. 2007. This makes me sick to my stomach and I wish I had better news. Here's what I'd like to do: I'd like to make a clean break from the old software. It's ancient, horrific, impossible to patch, and the Zope object database requires constant care so it doesn't grow to consume the entire disk. Even unfinished as this new software is, it's much better than the old. It's also much faster. As a bonus, Mike is familiar with it as well and you'll have more than one person capable of maintaining it. For that matter, it's actual source code as opposed to the weird XML blob that Zope was barely capable of horking up. So my plan is to bring up the new site on this software, spending some time to address some of the worst deficiencies (such as links in posts, etc.). Then, as I get time, I'll import the Dec. 2007 posts. I'll also make copies of the slagged data partition, with the hopes that some day we can reconstruct the August 2008 database and import those as well. I simply do not have the time to take care of this right now. What I need from you: 1) A list of features that you miss that are directly affecting the usefulness of the site. I don't mean, "I can't turn on Guido filtering" or "Statistics doesn't work", however. 2) Ideas on what to do with user IDs, keeping in mind that I can replicate many of them from the Dec. 2007 database. I'm not so sure about how well the passwords will transfer. 3) Patience. Comments and flames welcome; let 'er rip. Regards, -scott <i>Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.</i> Edited by malraux Nov. 8, 2008, 03:44:51 PM EST Expand All History
Post #299,209 by boxley 11/8/08 3:55:29 PM Reply	iffen ou want I could look at the backup disk the only issue with the current software is how it slaggs when you show all posts I sure nother could fix up a search version for it. the most important thing is the lrpd database, Im assuming that is fairly current? going forward some stock off the shelf peer to peer backup system that all of us could devote a few timeslices and diskspace nother, is there any internet archive stuff that might have the missing posts? Some creative wgets might be able to re-assemble a bunch of it. Throw it in a directory somewhere thanx, bill Yes, Virginia, there really is an Obama Claus. You can hear him shouting, "On Pelosi, on Reid, on Kennedy, on Biden. Cash away, cash away, cash away all!"
Post #299,210 by malraux 11/8/08 3:57:53 PM Reply	Re: iffen ou want I could look at the backup disk The all posts bug will be easy to fix, if it hasn't been already. Mike is running 0.1.4, and I have 0.1.5 locally. Not sure of the differences yet. I have the Zope ODB from August, which is where the old version kept the LRPDs. I'm going to see how big the dd is; I may be able to even put it on a DVD for people who want a crack at it. Regards, -scott <i>Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.</i>
Post #299,211 by crazy 11/8/08 4:40:48 PM Reply	Let me know when you dd it
Post #299,215 by Ashton 11/8/08 8:21:46 PM Reply	Re: iffen ou want I could look at the backup disk You mention 'dd'; since this needs a disk assembly able to perform mechanically. electronically OK -- I presume this means it is Not a mechanical (or fried onboard electronics) issue with the backup HD (?) I mean.. if that HD merely expired mechanically (or, say the +5V went to 25, etc. wiping the electronics board) -- mightn't there be a decent chance of successfully swapping the physical disks to a new identical drive? (Via some contrived plastic hood with small blower, a stone-air-filter of the sort used by watchmakers, for small positive air pressure inside -- as a disposable clean-room.) I realize, of course, that for big-$$ there are many places who do this routinely; I always prefer gaming the System, when I think I can / or won't spend the $$. Ashton
Post #299,216 by Andrew Grygus 11/8/08 8:51:49 PM Reply	If it's an electronic problem . . . . . it could be overcome by swapping the circuit board with an identical one. The problem is, it's almost impossible to find an identical board - seems the manufacturers change rev levels every couple of months or so, often changing geometry and head interfaces. Swapping disks into an identical drive is a job for specialists who charge thousands of dollars to do it.
Post #299,223 by Ashton 11/8/08 11:51:46 PM Reply	Ah, about the first - bummer. So then, only the disk-swap would make sense (if it were just drive failure and not contents-scrambling.) I've worked on ~similar "tiny clean things" of one-off kind. Am aware of the nit-pick qualities of clean rooms, though I haven't been in a modern Super-nitpick variety. Just seems to me, that the risk/reward of an ad hoc kluge in a plastic bag: should suffice, for the dexterous manipulator of the common screws I see in drives I've disembowelled: there could be pretty good odds of success, enhanced by a final blowing out with super-clean Nitrogen, just as the cover goes back on. Quite harder if heads had also to be replaced; I grant that absence of suitable fixtures for that task, absent also the the lore of all those fuck-ups while learning -- does bad things to the odds. It would have to survive for a very short time, etc. What's to lose, especially if NONE of the data could be gotten off as-is. And you haven't a couple grand to give the white-coated ones at $500/hr inflated overhead. (This is all moot in the present example, of course - he says that DD is the operative tool == the sucker does its spinny/seeky thing.)
Post #299,224 by malraux 11/9/08 12:00:12 AM Reply	The data is scrambled. The local backup drive can find some things, not others. The one from chutney has a bad superblock or something. Regards, -scott <i>Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.</i>
Post #299,227 by Ashton 11/9/08 12:40:39 AM Reply	Ah.. that's It then. It's all about TIME + expertise and patience. And everyone has a Life, which has no slot reserved for maddening fiddles with no withdrawal date. Fickle Finger Award (Laugh InÂ) to makers of that alleged array/controller. RAID, random assortment of indefensible drives? Lacking the requisite skillz, I shall at least loft a faint hope that one of our intrepid boffins can brilliantly deduce the exact madness-algorithm via which our orderly data came to look like the storage in Bush's brain. Sorry that our little fiefdom has now become {sob} an albatross. So, should we SHUN Mike? That seems to evoke magical powers.
Post #299,228 by folkert 11/9/08 1:40:35 AM Reply	Re: The data is scrambled. Can't use one of the backup Superblocks? There is usually at least 10... even on XFS.
Post #299,250 by malraux 11/9/08 10:30:12 AM Reply	The XFS utilities can't find them. Regards, -scott <i>Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.</i>
Post #299,257 by crazy 11/9/08 11:37:59 AM Reply	I lost chunks of an XFS partition before I used to really like XFS for speed. Nothing could beat it in streaming, and random access was pretty good too. I ended up putting all my Oracle tablespaces on it, and then start using it for random other stuff. And then I got multiple corrupt partitions. I'm sure this was hardware. But the recovery (or failed attempt in some cases) of XFS partitions seemed far more painful than ext3. I ended up moving away from it. As I get older, it seems I prefer comfort over speed. In many areas of my life.
Post #299,258 by folkert 11/9/08 12:53:10 PM Reply	Bummer.
Post #299,267 by boxley 11/9/08 1:50:38 PM Reply	not familiar with the card, was it a hardware raid? Yes, Virginia, there really is an Obama Claus. You can hear him shouting, "On Pelosi, on Reid, on Kennedy, on Biden. Cash away, cash away, cash away all!"
Post #299,275 by malraux 11/9/08 2:15:36 PM Reply	Yes. Pain in the ass, too. The drivers caused kernel faults, and both times we lost a drive the mirror got trashed. Regards, -scott <i>Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.</i>
Post #299,279 by boxley 11/9/08 3:17:33 PM Reply	that may be why the xfs tools cant find a superblock what was the name of the card again? I can do some poking around Yes, Virginia, there really is an Obama Claus. You can hear him shouting, "On Pelosi, on Reid, on Kennedy, on Biden. Cash away, cash away, cash away all!"
Post #299,280 by malraux 11/9/08 3:32:23 PM Reply	Re: that may be why the xfs tools cant find a superblock Believe it's a 3ware 9550, or something like that. I need to boot the machine to find out, but I'm trying to do that as infrequently as possible. Regards, -scott <i>Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.</i>
Post #299,281 by boxley 11/9/08 3:34:23 PM Reply	thats fine, I can start there. (out of curiousity) is adaptec out of fashion? I suppose greg or andrew could answer that for me. Lately I need to get re-familiarized with intel based systems thanx, bill Yes, Virginia, there really is an Obama Claus. You can hear him shouting, "On Pelosi, on Reid, on Kennedy, on Biden. Cash away, cash away, cash away all!"
Post #299,287 by folkert 11/9/08 5:09:35 PM Reply	I ordered and installed the 9550. The 9550 was the only card available at the time that worked with the motherboard, that didn't cost $5K and was SATA. (Yes other boards were available, but the PCI spec on the Motherboard forced the choice... as it was currently not supporting certain types of cards) The Card's firmware needs to be updated seriously. The kernel Scott WAS running was Sarge's, Right? (2.6.8) There have been some firmware updates that have addressed many issues since I bought the card. As far as using Adaptec cards... FEH. I have MORE PROBLEMS, in both slowness and data consistency with SCSI and SATA via Adaptec RAID cards than the 3Ware Cards. Adaptec Firmware updates for "Adaptec brand" cards only, if you have an "OEM" card you have to get them from your OEM which drops your version 6 months after you buy the damn thing. I've only had ANY REALLY GOOD LUCK lately (4-5 years) with MegaRAID series of stuff... and I am still skeptical as they used to Sucksoplenty back when Dual Athlon MP processors were the rage... what 7-8 years ago? The only server class stuff I REALLY still trust at all is the IBM ServeRAID stuff. Bucksoplenty for them.
Post #299,291 by boxley 11/9/08 5:19:09 PM Reply	funny inside my ibm 3550's is all adaptec, why I asked Yes, Virginia, there really is an Obama Claus. You can hear him shouting, "On Pelosi, on Reid, on Kennedy, on Biden. Cash away, cash away, cash away all!"
Post #299,314 by Another Scott 11/9/08 9:39:15 PM Reply	I'm out of town, so I'm hitting this late. The latest public archive I know of was made on September 13, 2007 - on the Wayback Machine: http://web.archive.o...rd/show?boardid=1 Lots of the links are dead though. Perhaps the older versions are more complete: http://web.archive.o...wethey.org/forums Google seems to have scanned the site on September 18, 2008 - but I don't know how complete the scraping was. It's not obvious to me how to follow links inside of Google's cache and stay in the cache... :-( If it would help, I'll see what I can do about grabbing what I can from Google. http://64.233.183.10...&client=firefox-a I'd be happy to reconstruct some form of Search using Altavista and so forth, but I would assume that if we aren't tied to Zope any more then it should be fairly easy to scrape the new database directly. That's just a guess on my part, though. I would assume that if the disk is still functioning, even in a degraded state, then it would be better to use GNU ddrescue or similar tools before thinking about taking the platters out or other extreme measures. I for one would be more than happy to chip in $ to send the disk to experts to be salvaged if it would save Scott and Mike time. Some of the rescue folks apparently can do miracles. (I understand that getting things after the last good backup is on a low priority.) Thanks Scott and Mike. Please don't get an ulcer over this. :-) Cheers, Scott.
Post #299,229 by static 11/9/08 1:40:58 AM Reply	Wishlist. Bugs. * The 'logged in' display is wrong. :-) Wishes. * Message quoting * Repeater link bar at the bottom for "Mark Form Read" at al. * Markup in the sigs (haven't tested this to see how much works, but I've seen other peoples' sigs and it's broken). * Being able to adjust the thread indenting. I'll let you know when I think of more. Wade.
Post #299,239 by mvitale 11/9/08 9:56:27 AM 11/9/08 9:59:08 AM Reply	Re: Wishlist. * Ability to remain logged in forever. * Mark-Read by Thread, not Forum. (Hey, I'm one of the coders now. I might-could actually make these happen, too!) -Mike Edited by mvitale Nov. 9, 2008, 09:59:08 AM EST Expand All History
Post #299,242 by boxley 11/9/08 10:00:00 AM Reply	logged in forever use firefox, save settings on exit, altho you will be logged in forever as mvitale Yes, Virginia, there really is an Obama Claus. You can hear him shouting, "On Pelosi, on Reid, on Kennedy, on Biden. Cash away, cash away, cash away all!"
Post #299,244 by mvitale 11/9/08 10:04:57 AM Reply	Doesn't help Because Tomcat will log you out after a time of inactivity anyway. -Mike
Post #299,245 by pwhysall 11/9/08 10:08:05 AM Reply	Re: Wishlist. * Respect my browser font choice * Lose the purple * Markup in posts * admin users (more to fix up broken links'n'shit in peoples' posts, than to police, but spammers need squishing from time to time) * A PM system is always handy
Post #299,251 by malraux 11/9/08 10:32:08 AM Reply	I repeat: 1) A list of features that you miss that are directly affecting the usefulness of the site. I don't mean, "I can't turn on Guido filtering" or "Statistics doesn't work", however. "Lose the purple", et al., do not belong in that category... ;-) Regards, -scott <i>Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.</i>
Post #299,247 by mvitale 11/9/08 10:10:14 AM Reply	Moved thread to "Suggestion Box" forum. Please direct all replies there. -Mike
Post #299,249 by jb4 11/9/08 10:26:06 AM Reply	Re: State of the IWETHEY Scott- The only "bug" I can think of is in the current (temp) forum, where the CSS doesn't allow my browser to override the font (Mike, I don't know enough webism to know how you do that, but I'd sure like to learn that some time...mostly so I could figure out a nice override). Patience? You got it in spades, dude! Good luck and god speed! 2008, the end of en error...
Post #299,273 by drook 11/9/08 2:13:51 PM Reply	One more "Post" button above posting options when previewing.
Post #299,288 by folkert 11/9/08 5:10:15 PM Reply	See the Suggestions thread please.
Post #299,299 by static 11/9/08 6:21:36 PM Reply	Oh yes - you want another possible code-monkey? I recall this version is Java and Mike's comment about Tomcat below confirmed it. I'm going to be doing Java at work in a few weeks and an opportunity to tinker with a whole completely different Java webapp interests me. Wade.

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