Archive for June, 2009

How to backup and restore a lot of data on to dvds

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

I’ve recently decided to backup a bunch of files stored on my server to dvds. Since I really didn’t feel the need to install X or any sort of associated desktop I decided to attempt this all on the command line. Here’s my process:

Tar up whatever needs to be backed up into a single tar file:

tar -cvf file.tar ./dir

Next split it into dvd sized chunks. This is only needed if your tar file is greater than 4.3gib. In my case it was about 14gib. Also 4.3gib = 4.7gb, so I don’t recommend messing with the –byte parameter unless you’re using dual layer or some other media type:

split --byte=4300m file.tar filePrefix

Now there should be several files ready to burn to dvd, which you can do with:

growisofs -Z /dev/dvd -r -J -allow-limited-size ./file

Since this is for backup purposes it is a good idea to use md5sums to make sure everything is correct:

md5sum ./file; md5sum /media/dvd/file

Finally in order to restore the tar file, first copy all dvds to the same directory (again I would md5sum to make sure the copies are correct) and:

cat filePrefix* > file.tar

Untar and enjoy! Now this isn’t the most convenient way of storing backups. I’d like to be able to browse the files on the dvd, but it seemed like too much work to figure out good spots to stop copying the file system onto the dvds. For now this will do, should my disk drive start failing I should have a great starting point to recover from.

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Who-what?!

Monday, June 15th, 2009

Well look at that. It’s been a while. Hi. So guess what’s new? I bought a house and moved into it. It’s pretty sweet. I also married my girlfriend of two and a half years. We’re as happy as pie! And finally this weekend I bought a carseat and a stroller! So the supposedly three big things in life, we’re doing them all this year, house, marriage and kid(from here on called Squirt Jr.). You could say we’ve been busy and that’s true, though now things are settling down at least for a few months.

Jamie is due in November, and from what I’ve been reading the following three months will be quite difficult, but not impossible. However I am looking forward to actually have a kid. A lot of people my age that I’ve talked to have sort of loomed it over me as death sentence (Your life is ending! Have fun never doing what you want…etc). Though I see it differently. Having a kid means I get to do all the kid stuff all over again. Play with legos? Check. Watch Saturday morning cartoons? Check! Scribble wildly on papers? Check! Go to the circus? That too! And what is better, I get to do this with someone who will think I’m the greatest person ever.

I’m optimisitic to be sure. And maybe I have high hopes that while be crashed against the rocks of reality. But I don’t see the end of my life coming soon, just a new adventure. A happy unexpected twist. PS: science.notsoevil.net – my plan to have all the answers a kid could ever ask. PPS: still have to find a theme that I actually like.

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