[Gllug] [OT] Appreciation

[Bruce Richardson]

On Sun, Dec 17, 2006 at 01:12:05AM +0000, Nix wrote:
> >> > ... but then I discovered gpart. A number of patches to gpart later, and
> >> > I was home free. Strongly recommended 
> >> 
> >> It's saved my (veggie) bacon more than once :)
> >> 
> >> And it's always (so far) guessed right!
> >
> > I don't trust any computer process to be able to guess right where it 
> > comes to recovering one of my systems hence I already print out and keep a 
> > copy of my partition table.
> 
> Likewise. But an even more important thing to keep printed out is a
> bunch of magic numbers of important filesystems. That way, if a machine
> goes tits-up and you don't have access to gpart or its partition table,
> you can mock up something that finds magic numbers: from that, you
> can determine the *start* of every partition, and then you're home free.
> (If you have filesystem images in files on some of those partitions,
> things can get a little more interesting, of course: but that's
> quite rare.)

It's more important never to be in a position where this kind of magic
is necessary.  If you are responsible for crucial business data (or
specially configured systems in a key role) and you find yourself
resorting to this level to get it back, your employers have reason to
question your suitability for the job.  Whether they are work systems or
home machines, you are far, *far* more likely to see general disk
failures or data corruption than problems with a partition table.  Cue
Martin's standard rant about backups, because good backups protect you
from all three scenarios whereas printing off your parition table might
rescue you from one.

-- 
Bruce

I object to intellect without discipline.  I object to power without
constructive purpose. -- Spock
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 196 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/gllug/attachments/20061220/df281744/attachment.pgp>
-------------- next part --------------
-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at gllug.org.uk
http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug