[OpenAFS] Server recovery

[Renata Maria Dart]

Hi Jeff, we create a backup of the entire /usr/afs/db directory
every night (and in addition every night we make a copy of the 
boot drive of our database servers onto an alternate drive).  
Is there anything more to be gained by using pt_util?  What is
the difference between making a copy of /usr/afs/db/prdb.DB and
prdb.DBSYS1, and running pt_util?  Also, is there documentation 
(besides pt_util -h) for this command?

Thanks,

Renata
 
>Delivered-To: openafs-info@openafs.org
>From: Jeffrey Hutzelman <jhutz@cmu.edu>
>To: James Burns <jfburns@gmail.com>, openafs-info@openafs.org
>Subject: Re: [OpenAFS] Server recovery
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>Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 17:10:06 -0400
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>On Friday, October 22, 2004 13:24:46 -0400 James Burns <jfburns@gmail.com> 
>wrote:
>
>> Thanks, that worked great. I can't believe I've been sitting around
>> with a broken cell for this long when the solution was so simple. Oh
>> well...
>
>For what it's worth, I recommend making regular backups of the prdb, 
>because its contents are critical to the correct functioning of the ACL 
>system.  If you have to recreate the prdb from scratch, you may be able to 
>reconstruct local users' ID's from other sources, but you are not going to 
>be able to recover the ID's of groups, foreign users, and non-null 
>instances (any of which may appear on ACL's) and you will not be able to 
>recover group memberships.
>
>The attached script (with modifications to reflect the location of your 
>server binaries and databases) can be run out of cron or the bosserver to 
>produce a prdb.dump each night.  In the event of a corrupted prdb, the 
>database can be reconstructed from scratch by feeding this file to pt_util.
>
>It is also useful in the inevitable event than an admin accidentally 
>deletes himself.
>
>-- Jeffrey T. Hutzelman (N3NHS) <jhutz+@cmu.edu>
>   Sr. Research Systems Programmer
>   School of Computer Science - Research Computing Facility
>   Carnegie Mellon University - Pittsburgh, PA

 Renata Dart                         | renata@SLAC.Stanford.edu  
 Stanford Linear Accelerator Center  |    
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 Stanford, California   94025        | (650) 926-3329 (fax)