[svlug] Reminder: SVLUG mailing list server failure risk, gap in backups

[JC Lawrence]

If you'll accept an SSH key, I'll setup an rsnapshot cronjob to backup whatever you want.

-- JCL

On 30 Dec 2014, at 10:29, Rick Moen <rick at svlug.org> wrote:

> For quite a few years, I've been warning SVLUG's core volunteers (on the
> Volunteers mailing list) that lists.svlug.org, the machine that runs this
> mailing list among others, is in decrepit state and in danger of sudden
> failure.  What most needs to occur over the long term is migration of
> Mailman, Exim4, Mailman's CGIs, spamd, sa-exim, a few related odds and ends,
> and our 17 years of mailing list archives (plus subscription rosters, etc.) 
> to the www.svlug.org Linode virthost that runs our Web site.  Unlike when we
> first got the Linode virthost, the latter now has enough RAM and disk space
> to house _all_ our services - as it's been upgraded since 2008.
> 
> There are many details of the situation I'm omitting here, else it would be
> a long tale.  (Available offlist to any interested.)
> 
> The point of this posting is two-fold:  
> 
> 1.  Risk of failure of lists.svlug.org continues to grow.  Any day, the 80GB
> PATA hard drive that houses the enitre mailing list server may (and some day
> certainly will) fail, if nothing else.  I believe it has now been running
> 24x7 for about 14 years.
> 
> 2.  I'm (again) raising an urgent red flag about backups.   Nobody's pitched
> in to help me keep those current since... um.. actually, ever.  Nobody's
> ever stepped forward.  My server being currently down means the latest
> backups of the mailing list cumulative mbox files - the 17 years of posting
> history - is the months-old set on my server backups.
> 
> My most recent red flag on Volunteers was on October 26th, here:  
> http://lists.svlug.org/archives/volunteers/2014q4/004480.html
> 
> Quoting:
> 
>  For the record, another [task being ignored] is backups.  Hey, guess what,
>  kiddies?  Remember that I was making backups of mailing list rosters and
>  cumulative mbox files from lists.svlug.org, and of the Web pages on
>  www.svlug.org?  Guess what's not happening with my server down?  I'm pretty
>  confident in guessing that nobody's bothered to step up to the plate.
> 
>  [...]
>  Backups?  Nobody's doing them.
> 
>  There are other things nobody's bothering to do.  All of them have been
>  covered over and over and over in this mailing list's archives.
> 
> Nobody on that mailing list replied or commented AT ALL.  So, I'm raising
> the red flag here so that, if the machine suddenly blows up and we lose a
> great deal, nobody can say I didn't warn you.
> 
> 
> How to back things up:
> 
> The big thing is the mbox files.  They can be retrieved by anyone via HTTP
> fetch, like this:
> 
> wget http://lists.svlug.org/archives/svlug.mbox/svlug.mbox 
> wget http://lists.svlug.org/archives/volunteers.mbox/volunteers.mbox
> wget http://lists.svlug.org/archives/svlug-announce.mbox/svlug-announce.mbox
> wget http://lists.svlug.org/archives/web-team.mbox/web-team.mbox
> wget http://lists.svlug.org/archives/jobs.mbox/jobs.mbox 
> wget http://lists.svlug.org/archives/smaug.mbox/smaug.mbox
> 
> Those with shell on lists.svlug.org can instead use rsync, which is of
> course much better for scripting because you can update prior backups ,
> fetching only the delta:
> 
> 
> rsync -avz --rsh=ssh rick at lists.svlug.org:/var/local/mailman/archives/private/svlug.mbox/svlug.mbox .
> rsync -avz --rsh=ssh rick at lists.svlug.org:/var/local/mailman/archives/private/volunteers.mbox/volunteers.mbox .
> rsync -avz --rsh=ssh rick at lists.svlug.org:/var/local/mailman/archives/private/svlug-announce.mbox/svlug-announce.mbox .
> rsync -avz --rsh=ssh rick at lists.svlug.org:/var/local/mailman/archives/private/svlug/web-team.mbox/web-team.mbox .
> rsync -avz --rsh=ssh rick at lists.svlug.org:/var/local/mailman/archives/private/svlug/jobs.mbox/jobs.mbox .
> rsync -avz --rsh=ssh rick at lists.svlug.org:/var/local/mailman/archives/private/svlug/smaug.mbox/smaug.mbox .
> 
> There.  Two different ways to help out with backups of the mailing list
> crown jewels that cannot be replace if lost.  
> 
> The migration of service off the rickety old machine is important, but
> backups are of paramount importance.
> 
> Don Marti and I do receive on every Sunday a dump from Mailman of the
> subscriber rosters of those six mailing lists, the _other_ truly
> essential data on the machine that cannot be replaced if list.
> 
> FYI, I am doing manual rsyncs of the six mbox files to my laptop, as I write this
> (extremely slow, as my home bandwidth is pretty impaired, and of course
> the delta the first time is the entire file).
> 
> 
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