@FaheemMitha Bacula would run verify jobs on the tapes it wrote, so verification was fully automated (but not restore testing); that’s the big thing I’m missing

my occasional restore checks are manual

@Kiwy exactly

I didn't know this funny statement on backups until I worked in a physical laboratory on storage issue :D It's currently stick on the wall next to me

@StephenKitt Ah. Is there some reason you don't automate your restore checks?

@Kiwy Very true.

BTW, those checking segment lines are alive and well. I just saw them in my backup. I think I'll live with them for now. They are apparently gone in 1.1.x, which I'll try to upgrade to soon.

The main reason I haven't done so already is that my remote VPS isn't upgradeable. It doesn't have it's own kernel. So if I want to get current Debian, I have to reinstall. Bummer.

@FaheemMitha I haven’t got round to it yet

@StephenKitt That sounds like me. :-)

Does anyone have a simple example of how a script to be run by cron where part of the script was run only some of the time, would look?

how do you define some of the time ? between two hours ? or after a number of iteration maybe ?

@FaheemMitha I have hourly backup jobs running, and one verification job at midnight. I too do not do restore checks for my personal backups, so I trust that if the software's verification test passes, I will be able to restore. I'm using restic, BTW.

@Kiwy 1 out of n iterations, I suppose.

@Kusalananda Yes, I remember you said you were using restic. But they still don't have compression working, right?

I use duplicati for my personnal backup it's a nice frontend to duplicity (not sur about duplicity)

@Kusalananda How do you handle the verification? Do you have a separate script you run? Or do you have some conditional in your regular script? As in - if it is midnight, then run this?

@FaheemMitha I used to have two scripts. One for backups, and one for the verification. Lately I have combined them, but use a command line argument (check or backup) to tell the script what to do.

Two separate cron, jobs. One running */55 * * * * for backups, and one at 15 0 * * * for checks.

I spaced them out so that they don't collide at midnight.

what is happening here in my bash history ?

!d expanded to done using history expansion. Use single quotes.

There's nothing that the shell has to peek at in that sed script, so single quoting it is appropriate.

In fact, make it a habit to always single quote static strings.

@Kusalananda +∞

OK I first really need to learn how shell pattern and expansion works, two single quote OK but my syntax is still incorrect

@Kusalananda thanks for the explanation ;-)

@Kiwy sed '2,${/pattern/d;}'

GNU sed will not need the ;

@Kusalananda thanks a lot.

why the brace {}

@Kiwy The script applies the command(s) within the {...} to all lines in the given range, 2,$ (line 2 to the end).

@Kusalananda fairly simple in fact :D Thank you very much

@Kusalananda A command line argument sounds like a good idea.

Folks, I'm thinking of reinstalling my VPS. However, this means losing all the data that is currently on it. And which I may or may not have locally - I'm pretty sure most of it is not important, but I'm still reluctant to wipe it.

So I need a way to save it temporarily somewhere before restoring it.

I've asked my provider (Ramnode), but most likely they will - say sorry can't help you.

Most of that data is not personal/valuable. Some of it (particularly the larget stuff) is bioinformatics data and things like that.

The personal stuff I have other copies of, and will delete before backing up.

do you want a temp space on my private ftp ? or webdav ? what is the size of the data ?

@FaheemMitha

@Kiwy That's very generous. Around 40G, according to du -hs.

It will probably be a bit less once I've deleted the private stuff.

OK no problem at all the only problem I could see is the fact that I'm hosted in france so we might not have the best transfer rate but should dtill be reasonnable

@Kiwy Great!

Huh, actually the Ramnode people said they could do a backup. I wasn't expecting that.

@FaheemMitha :D well if you have a local solution it would be definitely easier indeed

@Kiwy I expect so.

Thanks very much for the offer.

well no problem, I have the chance to have a french provider who really offers unlimited disk and unlimited ftp account, I guess if I would create thousands of account he would complain but it doesn't complain for now I could have share a little 40Gb of the unlimited quota :D

@Kiwy Unlimited disk? Really?

I'm surprised that doesn't get abused.

In India, it definitely would.

well I'm sure if I used dozens of terabyte they would complain but I've done some severe backup of 2 or 3 TB and I didn't receive even a warning

@Kiwy Oh. Well, I suppose disk space is cheap. Is this some kind of business or academic account?

It's a small provider I think that when the provider is smaller customer tend to be more reasonnable.

@Kiwy Yes, I see.

@FaheemMitha not at all it's a private company doing only web hosting

@Kiwy Are you talking about the provider?

@FaheemMitha yes

I was just wondering how you get to have an unlimited account. And what kind of account it is.

I have access to a web interface cpanle where I can do pretty much all a server could basically do, declare new vhost, create email addresses change version of PHP create FTP account create webdav account, it's a pretty nice offer for webhosting :D

@Kiwy So, is this a work account? Or a private account? What's the monthly cost?

6€ It's personnal one I've decided some years ago that I should try to avoid as much as possible gmail and other web giant :D

@Kiwy That's an amazing deal. Assuming you aren't a personal friend of the owner, can I have a link to the service?

And by "personal friend", I mean getting a special deal.

I don't use gmail either. Do they handle email hosting for you too?

@FaheemMitha that's the usual cost I don't know if they have an english webpage in french it's here: o2switch.fr

So it's a good service?

I've been using them for several years and except some downtime 2 or 3 time a years because of incident never had to complain. the support is good either by phone or email. I don't know how good it is in english but in french it's really comfortable.

They use to have way more problem 5 years ago, but the reliabilty has leveld up in the past years IMO

I think the last noticable (more than an hour) downtime was 6 months ago when I forget to renew :D

Is this a particularly good deal, or is there something I'm missing?

You don't get a VPS or anything, right? You just get to store data and do web hosting, right?

I think that unlimitted would limit if you finally end up using terabyts of braodband and disk daily but for a personnal website emails for you and familly it's a very good deal, also if you have a static IP you can declare it to have basic SSH access, you won't be able to be root on the server but could force restart of apache check configuration and things like that. I've never used it though so I don't really know how it works

I don't know if they are still doing it but they use to limit webdav protocol because it was way to CPU intensive. So owncloud could be hosted without webdav support. I can ask if it's something you need

I forget what webdav is.

So, I'm unclear. Does it include email hosting or not?

@FaheemMitha an HTTP-based bi-directional file transfer protocol

yes it does and it last years they really improve there spam filter

@Kiwy That sounds like an absurdly good deal. Both web and email hosting for 6 euros?

Am I missing something? What's the catch?

It's hosted in France and from anywhere outside france I'm not sure access will be amazing

I use Luxsci. It's USD 10 a month. In general, not much to complain about, but their spam filtering sucks.

@Kiwy Do they have slow links to the outside?

I never really tryed to used it from very far. Usually when I travel the last I do is checking my email :D

@Kiwy Oh. And do these people speak English, or don't you know?

@StephenKitt Thanks.

@FaheemMitha I'm almost sure they do they mention a UK phone number on there site :D I bet they speak english, I dont know if it's relevant because my site is really small, but does this look reactive to you: kiwypedia.fr

@Kiwy I'm getting a "site can't be reached". I could try my own internet connection.

This one is sometimes flakey.

Ok, now it's come up.

OK

that's the only site i host but if it's slow to you I bet anything else will be slow to access there

@FaheemMitha If you want to have an extended trial ask me I could install any major php application and let you access so you can test the 'reactivity' of the server if it's good enough. Also I could still give you a ftp account so you can test broadband with there servers

I'm patriotic all i do to help french economy :D

@Kiwy Thanks. I might take you up on that.

Ramnode replied as follows:

now you most likely have my email address you know how to contact me for sure ;-)

Not the ideal response, but a lot better than no.

@FaheemMitha that's a pretty nice proposal for a hoster

@Kiwy I don't think I do have your email address, actually.

@Kiwy I agree. They could just have told me to get lost.

@FaheemMitha well if you've been to my website you might have missed but I'm sure it is htere

But I don't think tar.gz is an ideal archive format for a file. So I'll probably offer a counterproposal. I think that fsarchiver does a good job of archiving stuff, for example.

@Kiwy Ah, right. Sorry, I forgot I had your web site.

BTW, your Linkedin page says "looking for a job". Is that outdated or current?

@FaheemMitha now who’s stalking :-P

@StephenKitt Stalking? He linked his Linkedin page.

@StephenKitt @FaheemMitha The english linkedin is not up to date the french one is, it's pain in the ass that I have to maintain both of them You both stalker anyway :D

@Kiwy Yes, it must be.

So I should use the kiwypedia email address?

@FaheemMitha see chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/44168721#44168721

@FaheemMitha indeed

Ok, I'm saving the web site too.

@StephenKitt now that's concerning you even stalk my answer in chat :P

@Kiwy I used the handy search function ;-)

@Kiwy What does Kiwy mean, if anything? Some French thing? A cartoon character?

A favorite pet? A stuffed toy?

Or it might be a NZ reference...

@FaheemMitha no just related to a joke I used to make in student party that was 15 minutes long and to most people not very funny

@Kiwy A 15 min long joke? That's an epic joke.

the joke was about kiwis (the fruit) when people starts to call me the kiwi guy I decided it would be nice as a pseudo but I choose a different spelling

making also a funny domain name IMO

@Kiwy A different spelling was probably a good idea.

@StephenKitt I'm surprised you don't use TheKittster as a nick.

@FaheemMitha I do in some places

@StephenKitt how neet / nit / neat (choose a speeling) it is ...

So, folks. Suggestions on what to use to archive a directory (or directories)? I was thinking fsarchiver, but that seems more geared towards filesystems.

tar.gz is old, and I'm not sure if it correctly preserves all attributes. Comments?

Actually, this is probably covered on the site. I should take a look.

tar works fine, recent versions support everything you’d want to archive, including SELinux contexts, extended attributes and ACLs

@StephenKitt Oh, really? Huh.

you can use xz for better compression

Well, I'll take your word for it. But that's surprising.

@StephenKitt Pros/cons?

@FaheemMitha pro: better compression; con: slower compression

@FaheemMitha why surprising? it’s still the default archiving tool for most sysadmins

@StephenKitt I mean, in terms of saving everything accurately.

@StephenKitt Shrug. I don't know, I've never considered it a very sophisticated tool.

I suppose there's a bit of - "it's old" bias built in.

@FaheemMitha so’s ls ;-)

@StephenKitt ls seems to get rewritten quite a lot.

At least from what I remember of the logs.

It's still part of coreutils, right?

@FaheemMitha yes

not sure about rewritten

but it’s active

@StephenKitt So you recommend both tar and xz unreservedly?

@FaheemMitha yes

@StephenKitt Ok, thank you.

if you're having doubt about TAR file getting corrupted you could calculate some spare block with par2

@Kiwy I'm not sure what that means.

And I'm not particularly concerned about corruption, though I suppose that's always a possibility.

par2 is an utility to calculate parity code for binary format, the only use I know of is to download binary on newsgroup where archive split in dozens of file easilly get corrupted. But I guess you could add some parity file next to your tar file if you have fear of loosing/corrupting part

(once you're sure your archive is properly construct of course)

Just had fun yelling at some idiots. People are so stupid.

(I realise this sounds cryptic, but I'm just so frustrated right now.)

@FaheemMitha Oh no, have you taken up a job offer with the White House?

@derobert No, just some people who sort of work for me. It's complicated.

Would you sign a document in a language you didn't read or understand?

No? I wouldn't either.

Depends on if I can sign it with a signature that isn't mine and date it with a date before I was born.

But it seems that isn't obvious to some people. Welcome to the Marvellous Land of India.

@derobert Funny.

Just having a weird conversation with someone on IRC.

I wonder what the courts would do with such a silly act... I'm not even sure what the courts here would do.

It seems the Mercurial Steering Committee tried to force out one of the main developers, for reasons that are unclear.

Are these people programmers or politicians.

I sort of know the person in question. I've submitted a few patches to him.

Is this a strange world, or what?

@derobert The laws in the US and India seem quite different, from a casual glance.

I'm afraid the leaders of any large-ish open source project have to be both programmers and politicians. Or something similar, like managers...

@FaheemMitha Probably.

The Indian Contract Act of 1872 (British India) has quite broad anti-fraud language.

(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Contract_Act,_1872

Contract law here is probably broadly speaking similar, since we both got it from English common law.

Of course, we stopped accepting upstream patches earlier...

@derobert You'd think so. But from what I read, US law is a lot less Moron Friendly.

More of a - you broke it, you bought it - sort of deal.

Apropos of nothing, have you ever read "Watership Down"?

I don't think so, but the description on Wikipedia sounds vaguely familiar. So I've probably heard of it before.

This Quora question actually poses the exact question:

quora.com/in/…

@derobert You should read it. You'll probably like it.

It's one of those books that basically everyone likes. Even more than, say, Harry Potter.

I mean, lots of people don't particularly like Harry Potter. But as far as I know, everyone loves Watership Down.

@FaheemMitha Well, that'd appear to apply even if he/she could read it; it's about forcing someone to sign.

Presuming a certain meaning of 'force' the same is true here, at least that it wouldn't be valid.

@derobert There's a section about misrepresentation. Which would presumably be relevant only if the signer couldn't read the document.

Coercion is a separate issue, I'd say.

I don't think the answers in the Quora question are good. They don't seem to be addressing the question directly.

See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Contract_Act,_1872#Free_Consent, items 3 (Fraud) and 4 (Misrepresentation).

@FaheemMitha Well, it's probably not fraud (I guess unless the person lies and claims he can read it, but then he's the one committing fraud). And I'd guess its only misrepresentation if the other party doesn't describe what's in the contract correctly... But I have no idea about Indian law. In the US, we have something called meeting of the minds ... which I'm guessing would be hard to show if one of the parties can't understand (cont'd)

... the language its in, and doesn't have an interpreter to help.

@derobert No, the people A who asked person B to sign committed fraud by misrepresenting the contents of the letter.

I obviously haven't told you the full context. Which is, complicated.

I don't have much idea about how Indian law works in this context, either.

Perhaps, like many things, the devil is in the details.

From what I hear about your legal system, you could have an answer in c. 20 years if you'd like to litigate :-/

@derobert Yes, there's that too.

Not that ours is particularly fast, either, especially if one of the parties wants to delay.

It's not my legal system, though. I disawow all ownership.

LOL

I wont object as long as I can disavow all ownership of the Orange One's administration.

@derobert Sure you can. Why not?

I'm sure if he starts WWIII, Americans in general will get blamed, not just the ones who supported him....

@derobert I suggest you prepare a memo in advance. Then you can hand it out, like a flyer...

I think those flyers say something like "I like maple syrup. I'll try and watch a hockey game. I'm Canadian, eh?"

@derobert Um, what?

@FaheemMitha I think that's how its normally done — pretend to be from Canada.

Which is rather silly. So that's the silliest flyer I could come up with on the spot.

@derobert In terms of silliness, it's certainly up there.

Well, I'm glad I succeeded then.

There seems to be a lot of sterotyping about Canadians in the US.

At least at the level of popular culture. E.g. HIMYM.

In practice they're indistinguishable from Americans.

@FaheemMitha HIMYM? Google suggests a show I never watched...

I was in Canada briefly in 2007. A place called Edmonton. The thing I noticed most is that the girls tended to dress up more. American women don't tend to, as much.

Slack and flats are favored.

@derobert How I Met Your Mother.

@FaheemMitha Hence people saying they're from Canada to avoid being yelled at for American policy.

But also... the closer you are to something & the more familiar with it you are, the more you notice the tiny differences.

The Character played by Cobie Smulders, Robin, is Canadian. As is Cobie herself, of course.

So it'd be completely expected that both Canadians and Americans notice more differences between the two than, say, you in India.

And similarly, I'm sure there are a ton of different groups in India who I'd just call Indians and not notice the differences.

@derobert I lived in the US a long time. I was pretty acclimatized.

@derobert Honestly, I can't tell the differences much myself. But I've never related very well to India.

Or see how much a Windows user can tell the seriously important differences between bash & zsh.

Or even, gasp, csh.

@FaheemMitha I bet you can at least tell apart, say, the various regional cuisines.

@derobert Well, they both have tab completion.

@derobert Somewhat. I don't pay a lot of attention, honestly.

@FaheemMitha And blinky blocks you're supposed to type cryptic things at.

Do you cook a lot of Indian food? If so, you probably know more about it than I do.

@derobert That too.

@FaheemMitha No, I don't. I'm pretty sure I know less about it.

@derobert Indian food is pretty good.

I enjoy eating it. Someday I even hope to convince some friends to try it...

@derobert I thought it was like super-popular in the West.

@FaheemMitha It is... but I have a few very unadventurous friends :-(

It's not that exotic.