>>> Windows Sharepoint
>>
>> OOC, what does that actually *do*?
> 
> It's a glorified web portal with a million addons. There's a lot of 
> demand for it at the moment in SA, so it's mainly there so I can get 
> some feel for how it works.
> http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/sharepoint/bb684453.aspx

At one point we were going to use it at work (although nobody I spoke to 
could tell me what it's supposed to do or why we need it or what we 
would use it for beyond "sharing stuff").

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:48bcf13e$1@news.povray.org...
>>>> Windows Sharepoint
>>>
>>> OOC, what does that actually *do*?
>>
>> It's a glorified web portal with a million addons. There's a lot of 
>> demand for it at the moment in SA, so it's mainly there so I can get some 
>> feel for how it works.
>> http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/sharepoint/bb684453.aspx
>
> At one point we were going to use it at work (although nobody I spoke to 
> could tell me what it's supposed to do or why we need it or what we would 
> use it for beyond "sharing stuff").

It's useful if you have groups of people working on documents. Rather than 
sending various versions by mail, you put them into sharepoint. Sharepoint 
(even the free version) has versioning and checkout/checkin of documents, as 
well as tracking who made what changes and workflow (so the system can mail 
someone when a document is uploaded, make a copy somewhere when the document 
is 'approved', prevent changes while it's in a certain status, etc)

It's a quick and easy to build intranet portal. No web design/developmetn 
skills are required to edit lists in sharepoint, so the secretary can add 
news items, calendar entries, announcements and the like

Post a reply to this message

>> At one point we were going to use it at work (although nobody I spoke 
>> to could tell me what it's supposed to do or why we need it or what we 
>> would use it for beyond "sharing stuff").
> 
> It's useful if you have groups of people working on documents. Rather 
> than sending various versions by mail, you put them into sharepoint. 
> Sharepoint (even the free version) has versioning and checkout/checkin 
> of documents, as well as tracking who made what changes and workflow (so 
> the system can mail someone when a document is uploaded, make a copy 
> somewhere when the document is 'approved', prevent changes while it's in 
> a certain status, etc)
> 
> It's a quick and easy to build intranet portal. No web 
> design/developmetn skills are required to edit lists in sharepoint, so 
> the secretary can add news items, calendar entries, announcements and 
> the like

We have purchased a "document control system" that we use to store all 
our procedure documents and revise/approve them, etc. It's not a very 
*good* system, but there we are. (It's very over-complicated for what it 
actually does. And yet, at the same time, it's very inflexible. It will 
only do things in a certain way, etc.)

It used to be a client/server package (which was quite slow), but now 
it's web-based (which is even slower). One nice feature is that you must 
manually turn off web caching on your browser, and disable all web 
caching between your machine and the web server, or the thing 
malfunctions. (In other words, the designers don't know how to write web 
apps properly.) Also only works with specific combinations of Java and 
Acrobat.

Still, I guess I should think myself lucky. It can't be long now before 
they move it to Terminal Services, and then I'll have a huge raft of 
*new* problems to worry about...

This is perhaps why we never did get Sharepoint.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Gail wrote:
>>> Windows Sharepoint (pending reinstallation)
>> OOC, what does that actually *do*?
> It's a glorified web portal with a million addons.

Oh, I remember that. It's Microsoft Drupal, basically. :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> 
> Is that software RAID or hardware RAID?

Software. Real HW-RAID costs incredible amounts of money and software is 
easily trustable enough for home usage.

> My dad went with a hardware RAID solution, and it was utterly useless. 
> You had to resilver it every few hours because it kept breaking.

It was some random bulk-card and I'd doubt how hardware based it 
actually was, but since RAID-1 is only a mirroring, it's possible to do 
cheaply.

> 
> Ever tried to perform a low-level format on a HD? 

Yes. It was the time when 120MB disk died and it was worthy enough to 
try to rewake (yes, I succeeded).

> No matter what size it 
> is, it always takes an extremely long time. (The bigger the drive, the 
> faster it is, but the power to weight ratio seems fairly constant, so it 
> always takes a long time.) 

OTOH today you can format multiple drives at once without significant 
loss in time.

> Formatting a huge drive with, say, FAT or 
> NTFS only takes a few minutes, but a low-level format takes an hour or 
> more.

Yes. Formatting to ext3 or XFS takes a moment more, since the system 
also creates journaling ;).

> Resilvering the mirror was similar. It's mirrored at the hardware level, 
> so the disks must be block-by-block identical.

Linux keeps the software-RAID-1 block-by-block -identical also - and it 
drops the disk from the array if it can't do that. What it doesn't do is 
dropping the disk from the array if it works, so if you'll get a drop, 
you know you're going to have a need to replace that drive - either 
immediality or really soon.

> 
> Yeah, I guess... Doesn't seem like you're gaining a huge amount, but I 
> guess it's better than nothing.

Do backups ever seem like gaining a huge amount? Think again. How does 
external HD differ from LTO-tape in
1) in virus-case, when all online files are compromised or deleted
2) when your running data-disk breaks up
3) when you'll accidentally press "delete"
4) when the flood comes through your roof
5) when some looney robs your laptop

And yes, if your house burns down or your roofs gives up and lets the 
water in, you do have a bigger problem than your binary data. But it 
doesn't remove the dataloss being a problem, it just cumulates all other 
problems on top of it.

> 
> ...in other words, a HD. Like what I said. :-P
> 

Yep.

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
    http://www.zbxt.net
       aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

Post a reply to this message

Eero Ahonen wrote:
>> Formatting a huge drive with, say, FAT or NTFS only takes a few 
>> minutes, but a low-level format takes an hour or more.
> 
> Yes. Formatting to ext3 or XFS takes a moment more, since the system 
> also creates journaling ;).

NTFS also creates journaling. The actual difference is that ext2 and 
ext3 preallocate all the inodes, while NTFS doesn't.

> What it doesn't do is dropping the disk from the array if it works,

I would have to disagree with you there.

> And yes, if your house burns down or your roofs gives up and lets the 
> water in, you do have a bigger problem than your binary data.

I disagree. Fixing your house is just money. Getting back the vacation 
photos, or the photos of people who are no longer alive, is much more 
difficult.  :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

>> Is that software RAID or hardware RAID?
> 
> Software. Real HW-RAID costs incredible amounts of money and software is 
> easily trustable enough for home usage.

Well that's what I'd figure...

>> My dad went with a hardware RAID solution, and it was utterly useless. 
>> You had to resilver it every few hours because it kept breaking.
> 
> It was some random bulk-card and I'd doubt how hardware based it 
> actually was.

Well he got a newer motherboard where the chipset throws in a RAID 
function just for fun (this seems to be very common now), and had the 
exact same problem. (Despite it being an unrelated machine with 
unrelated drives.)

>> No matter what size it is, it always takes an extremely long time. 
> 
> OTOH today you can format multiple drives at once without significant 
> loss in time.

That's true. Although I've never yet had occasion to need to format 
multiple drives in the same day. ;-)

> Linux keeps the software-RAID-1 block-by-block -identical also - and it 
> drops the disk from the array if it can't do that. What it doesn't do is 
> dropping the disk from the array if it works, so if you'll get a drop, 
> you know you're going to have a need to replace that drive - either 
> immediality or really soon.

This is where the system my dad had failed; it would randomly drop 
drives for no apparent reason. Once he turned RAID off completely, all 
the drives worked just fine. Go figure.

>> Yeah, I guess... Doesn't seem like you're gaining a huge amount, but I 
>> guess it's better than nothing.
> 
> Do backups ever seem like gaining a huge amount? Think again. How does 
> external HD differ from LTO-tape in
> 1) in virus-case, when all online files are compromised or deleted
> 2) when your running data-disk breaks up
> 3) when you'll accidentally press "delete"
> 4) when the flood comes through your roof
> 5) when some looney robs your laptop

Because the LTO system we have at work involves the tapes being put in a 
fire resistant safe in a remote location. ;-) Obviously, a home user 
with an external HD isn't going to do this.

> And yes, if your house burns down or your roofs gives up and lets the 
> water in, you do have a bigger problem than your binary data. But it 
> doesn't remove the dataloss being a problem, it just cumulates all other 
> problems on top of it.

...it just means that that problem is dwarfed by all the other ones! :-D

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:

>> And yes, if your house burns down or your roofs gives up and lets the 
>> water in, you do have a bigger problem than your binary data.
> 
> I disagree. Fixing your house is just money. Getting back the vacation 
> photos, or the photos of people who are no longer alive, is much more 
> difficult.  :-)

...like pictures of the people who were in the house while it was burning?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> Because the LTO system we have at work involves the tapes being put in a 
> fire resistant safe in a remote location. ;-) Obviously, a home user 
> with an external HD isn't going to do this.

Uh, I do. :-) At least, one of the backups goes in the local fireproof 
safe inside the local theft-proof safe, and the other is at the office.

If you encrypt it and have two, there's no real need to protect *all* 
the copies vigorously.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:48bea76f$1@news.povray.org...
>
> Because the LTO system we have at work involves the tapes being put in a 
> fire resistant safe in a remote location. ;-) Obviously, a home user with 
> an external HD isn't going to do this.
>

Why not?

I make a second copy of my backups (admittidly DVD) every couple of months 
and leave it in my parent's fire-proof safe.
I figure if my machine crashes, my local backups are destroyed and their 
house (55km away) is destroyed at the same time, there are probably lots 
bigger problems to worry about....

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> 
> NTFS also creates journaling. The actual difference is that ext2 and 
> ext3 preallocate all the inodes, while NTFS doesn't.

Now that you mention, this has been discussed earlier.

Do you know if XFS preallocates all the inodes? It does take a 
significant time to mkfs.

>> What it doesn't do is dropping the disk from the array if it works,
> 
> I would have to disagree with you there.

I have to assume you have experience to show/tell us?

>> And yes, if your house burns down or your roofs gives up and lets the 
>> water in, you do have a bigger problem than your binary data.
> 
> I disagree. Fixing your house is just money. Getting back the vacation 
> photos, or the photos of people who are no longer alive, is much more 
> difficult.  :-)

Well yes, that's also true ;).

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
    http://www.zbxt.net
       aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

Post a reply to this message

Gail wrote:

>> Because the LTO system we have at work involves the tapes being put in 
>> a fire resistant safe in a remote location. ;-) Obviously, a home user 
>> with an external HD isn't going to do this.
>>
> 
> Why not?
> 
> I make a second copy of my backups (admittidly DVD) every couple of 
> months and leave it in my parent's fire-proof safe.
> I figure if my machine crashes, my local backups are destroyed and their 
> house (55km away) is destroyed at the same time, there are probably lots 
> bigger problems to worry about....

Gail Shaw, that is without question the most robust backup plan I've 
ever heard anybody actually use IRL. Even the global corporation I work 
for doesn't go that far. (Our stuff is "off site", but not that many 
miles away.)

I guess there's an exception to every rule.... ;-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> 
> Well he got a newer motherboard where the chipset throws in a RAID 
> function just for fun (this seems to be very common now), and had the 
> exact same problem. (Despite it being an unrelated machine with 
> unrelated drives.)

Weird. Do the mobo and the card share the same chipset?

> That's true. Although I've never yet had occasion to need to format 
> multiple drives in the same day. ;-)

Oooh, you're just so young.

> 
> This is where the system my dad had failed; it would randomly drop 
> drives for no apparent reason. Once he turned RAID off completely, all 
> the drives worked just fine. Go figure.

That's what I figured.

OTOH, did you do any tests on that drive? Or checked S.M.A.R.T. log?

>>
>> Do backups ever seem like gaining a huge amount? Think again. How does 
>> external HD differ from LTO-tape in
>> 1) in virus-case, when all online files are compromised or deleted
>> 2) when your running data-disk breaks up
>> 3) when you'll accidentally press "delete"
>> 4) when the flood comes through your roof
>> 5) when some looney robs your laptop
> 
> Because the LTO system we have at work involves the tapes being put in a 
> fire resistant safe in a remote location. ;-) 

That's physical job, which has nothing to say with the type of the 
media. Even if it had, it would rule out case number 4.

> Obviously, a home user 
> with an external HD isn't going to do this.

And a home user with LTO would? Besides nothing stops you doing it with 
external HD at home.

> 
> ...it just means that that problem is dwarfed by all the other ones! :-D
> 

Which isn't equal with the problem being non-existent.

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
    http://www.zbxt.net
       aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

Post a reply to this message

Eero Ahonen wrote:
> Do you know if XFS preallocates all the inodes? It does take a 
> significant time to mkfs.

No idea.

> I have to assume you have experience to show/tell us?

Yes. I have about 30 machines in production, all running Linux software 
RAID.  About once a month, one of the machines loses a drive which comes 
back just fine by me telling Linux to take it out of the raid and then 
put it back in again.  All new drives.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Eero Ahonen wrote:
> 
>> I have to assume you have experience to show/tell us?
> 
> Yes. I have about 30 machines in production, all running Linux software 
> RAID.  About once a month, one of the machines loses a drive which comes 
> back just fine by me telling Linux to take it out of the raid and then 
> put it back in again.  All new drives.
> 

Intresting. At work we have 127 machines with SW-RAID-1 (running SuSE 
7.3, IIRC kernel 2.4.31) and if any of them drops a disk, there surely 
are errors on that disk.

I take it you've checked the logs (message log and S.M.A.R.T. -log) to 
see, if there would've been any indication of why the disk has been dropped.

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
    http://www.zbxt.net
       aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

Post a reply to this message

Eero Ahonen wrote:
> I take it you've checked the logs (message log and S.M.A.R.T. -log) to 
> see, if there would've been any indication of why the disk has been 
> dropped.

Yeah. I don't remember what it said, but it was uninformative. Not a 
SMART error. Just some controller sync something or other. It could even 
be the power in the buildings. Lots of our servers, due to the nature of 
the service, are in private buildings not really designed for such.


-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Well... she decided to take it elsewhere first, but they failed to fix 
it. So now the drive has come to me. (For anybody who missed it, YES, 
this is a USB flash drive, NOT a USB HD.)

I booted up KNOPPIX and plugged the drive in. It's reported as 64 MB. (I 
don't know if that's actually correct.) I was able to copy the entire 
contents using dd.

I just had a look at a hex dump of the file. The first few million 
octets are 0xFF. Then there's a block of 0x00. And then there's a block 
of seemingly random bytes which may be actual data.

I'm not an expert in such matters, but I was under the impression that 
the very first few octets is supposed to be a partition table. So it 
looks like that block has somehow got fried, which is why nothing is 
working now. It also looks like at least some usable data might still be 
there.

The oddessy will continue...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:

> The oddessy will continue...

Well, once I figured out that the filesystem sits directly on the drive 
rather than in a partition, Test Disk made short work of copying the 
files out of the disk image. Some of them are broken mind you, and 
several files showed up under multiple names, but much of the stuff 
still works.

We'll see if this makes me popular or not...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:48c4f7be$1@news.povray.org...
> Well... she decided to take it elsewhere first, but they failed to fix it. 
> So now the drive has come to me.

    Did she bring it to you directly? What did she say??


      ~Steve~




> http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
> http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

St. wrote:

>     Did she bring it to you directly? What did she say??

"Hi Andrew. I got my boyfriend to take it to Pfizer, but their IT 
department couldn't fix it. Could you take a look at it?"

She seemed fairly impressed when I recovered a wedge of files from it.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

And lo on Thu, 11 Sep 2008 09:45:52 +0100, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did  
spake, saying:

> St. wrote:
>
>>     Did she bring it to you directly? What did she say??
>
> "Hi Andrew. I got my boyfriend to take it to Pfizer, but their IT  
> department couldn't fix it. Could you take a look at it?"
>
> She seemed fairly impressed when I recovered a wedge of files from it.

Dear Pfizer,

Recently one of our staff had her damaged hard drive looked over  
informally by your IT department who were unable to recover any  
information from it. I have just pulled a wedge of files from it. Are you  
hiring?


-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

Post a reply to this message

Phil Cook wrote:

> Dear Pfizer,
> 
> Recently one of our staff had her damaged hard drive looked over 
> informally by your IT department who were unable to recover any 
> information from it. I have just pulled a wedge of files from it. Are 
> you hiring?

Heheheh. Nice idea...

...unfortunately, there is a clause in my contract of employment that 
specifically prohibits exactly this. o_O

I do wonder though - how hard did they actually try? I'm guessing not 
very hard. If I could find Test Disk in a few minutes with Google and 
get data back despite the minimalistic user manual, the full mite of a 
global corporation like Pfizer should surely make very short work of it. 
If they actually cared.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

"Orchid XP v8" <voi### [at] devnull> a écrit dans le message de 
news:48c97219$1@news.povray.org...
> get data back despite the minimalistic user manual, the full mite of a 
> global corporation like Pfizer should surely make very short work of it.

It's a well-known fact that every global corporation has a secret room 
buried under its headquarters, where it keeps elephant-sized, 
allergy-causing parasitic arachnids for such purposes as recovering computer 
data;

G.

Post a reply to this message

Gilles Tran wrote:

> It's a well-known fact that every global corporation has a secret room 
> buried under its headquarters, where it keeps elephant-sized, 
> allergy-causing parasitic arachnids for such purposes as recovering 
> computer data;

Elephant-sized, allergy-causing parasitic arachnids?

So... that's your next Zazzle offering?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

On 11-Sep-08 22:14, Gilles Tran wrote:
> "Orchid XP v8" <voi### [at] devnull> a écrit dans le message de 
> news:48c97219$1@news.povray.org...
>> get data back despite the minimalistic user manual, the full mite of a 
>> global corporation like Pfizer should surely make very short work of it.
> 
> It's a well-known fact that every global corporation has a secret room 
> buried under its headquarters, where it keeps elephant-sized, 
> allergy-causing parasitic arachnids for such purposes as recovering 
> computer data;
> 
That's no way to talk about our mascot.

Post a reply to this message

andrel wrote:
> On 11-Sep-08 22:14, Gilles Tran wrote:
>> It's a well-known fact that every global corporation has a secret room
>> buried under its headquarters, where it keeps elephant-sized,
>> allergy-causing parasitic arachnids for such purposes as recovering
>> computer data;
>> 
> That's no way to talk about our mascot.

LOL

Post a reply to this message

>> That's no way to talk about our mascot.
> 
> LOL

O_O

Heh, and I used to go by the nick "Arachnid" as well... But then I found 
that nobody IRL could pronounce it.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:48c8dabe$1@news.povray.org...
> St. wrote:
>
>>     Did she bring it to you directly? What did she say??
>
> "Hi Andrew. I got my boyfriend to take it to Pfizer, but their IT 
> department couldn't fix it. Could you take a look at it?"
>
> She seemed fairly impressed when I recovered a wedge of files from it.

   Lol, just caught up with this thread. Well, good on you*. I know what 
it's like going through a pile of files that you 'might' want to recover 
from an image created by the free FileRecovery prog.

 *Mate, make that move to a better paid job. You're worth more than you're 
getting. Stuff the rent or buying somewhere for now - I'd live in my car if 
I had to. Seriously.


     ~Steve~



>
> -- 
> http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
> http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message