MythTV backup

[David Segall]

Yesterday I thought I might have lost all my MythTV data. Fortunately,
the fix was simple but it made me wonder how I could protect my set up
from catastrophic failure.

Operating a redundant fall back computer seems like overkill for this
application but I don't see any other solution to ensuring that MythTV
satisfies the SOAF [1] factor.

How do you ensure that your fried MythTV can be restored in time for the
nightly news and you have not lost the latest episode of the unmissable
series that screened last night when you were out?

--
David

[1] SOAF = Significant Other Acceptance Factor. Clearly, GAF and WAF are
sexist so I thought of using PAF for Partner Acceptance Factor but that
  did not cover the MythTV geeks who are living with their aged parents.

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[John Drescher-2]

On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 9:57 AM, David Segall <david@...> wrote:

> Yesterday I thought I might have lost all my MythTV data. Fortunately,
>  the fix was simple but it made me wonder how I could protect my set up
>  from catastrophic failure.
>
>  Operating a redundant fall back computer seems like overkill for this
>  application but I don't see any other solution to ensuring that MythTV
>  satisfies the SOAF [1] factor.
>
>  How do you ensure that your fried MythTV can be restored in time for the
>  nightly news and you have not lost the latest episode of the unmissable
>  series that screened last night when you were out?
>

I have the os disks on raid 5 (although I am eventually going to
remove that so I can spin down the disks to save power). And I have a
cron job that makes a backup of the mysql database each night to yet
another disk (not part of the raid). Every once and a while I email
myself that file to my 6.5GB gmail account.

John
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[Robert Longbottom]

On Wed, April 2, 2008 3:06 pm, John Drescher wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 9:57 AM, David Segall <david@...> wrote:
>> Yesterday I thought I might have lost all my MythTV data. Fortunately,
>>  the fix was simple but it made me wonder how I could protect my set up
>>  from catastrophic failure.
>>
>>  Operating a redundant fall back computer seems like overkill for this
>>  application but I don't see any other solution to ensuring that MythTV
>>  satisfies the SOAF [1] factor.
>>
>>  How do you ensure that your fried MythTV can be restored in time for
>> the
>>  nightly news and you have not lost the latest episode of the unmissable
>>  series that screened last night when you were out?
>>
> I have the os disks on raid 5 (although I am eventually going to
> remove that so I can spin down the disks to save power). And I have a
> cron job that makes a backup of the mysql database each night to yet
> another disk (not part of the raid). Every once and a while I email
> myself that file to my 6.5GB gmail account.
>
> John

Now thats a good use of a gmail account!  I like that idea.  It's not
particularly private or sensitive data, and you get an offsite backup...

I too have a cron job that backs up my DB in case of corruption.  I should
probably arrange to copy it off-server as well in case the disk fails.
But in that case I'm screwed anyway as I don't have any kind of RAID setup
so no database would be the least of my worries!

Robert.

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[David Segall]

John Drescher wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 9:57 AM, David Segall <david@...> wrote:
>> Yesterday I thought I might have lost all my MythTV data. Fortunately,
>>  the fix was simple but it made me wonder how I could protect my set up
>>  from catastrophic failure.
>>
>>  Operating a redundant fall back computer seems like overkill for this
>>  application but I don't see any other solution to ensuring that MythTV
>>  satisfies the SOAF [1] factor.
>>
>>  How do you ensure that your fried MythTV can be restored in time for the
>>  nightly news and you have not lost the latest episode of the unmissable
>>  series that screened last night when you were out?
>>
> I have the os disks on raid 5 (although I am eventually going to
> remove that so I can spin down the disks to save power). And I have a
> cron job that makes a backup of the mysql database each night to yet
> another disk (not part of the raid). Every once and a while I email
> myself that file to my 6.5GB gmail account.

So what happens if your motherboard is fried by a power supply failure
which was my fear yesterday? I thought that the disk drives would
probably be OK but I knew that I could not find an exact replacement for
  the motherboard and I feared that I would need to do a complete
reinstall of the OS. I was not confidant that a reinstall could preserve
the existing data. I also needed to provide a TV set to watch tonight's
TV programs.
--
David
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[jedi-2]

On Wed, Apr 02, 2008 at 03:18:12PM +0100, Robert wrote:

> On Wed, April 2, 2008 3:06 pm, John Drescher wrote:
> > On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 9:57 AM, David Segall <david@...> wrote:
> >> Yesterday I thought I might have lost all my MythTV data. Fortunately,
> >>  the fix was simple but it made me wonder how I could protect my set up
> >>  from catastrophic failure.
> >>
> >>  Operating a redundant fall back computer seems like overkill for this
> >>  application but I don't see any other solution to ensuring that MythTV
> >>  satisfies the SOAF [1] factor.
> >>
> >>  How do you ensure that your fried MythTV can be restored in time for
> >> the
> >>  nightly news and you have not lost the latest episode of the unmissable
> >>  series that screened last night when you were out?
> >>
> > I have the os disks on raid 5 (although I am eventually going to
> > remove that so I can spin down the disks to save power). And I have a
> > cron job that makes a backup of the mysql database each night to yet
> > another disk (not part of the raid). Every once and a while I email
> > myself that file to my 6.5GB gmail account.
> >
> > John
>
> Now thats a good use of a gmail account!  I like that idea.  It's not
> particularly private or sensitive data, and you get an offsite backup...
>
> I too have a cron job that backs up my DB in case of corruption.  I should
> probably arrange to copy it off-server as well in case the disk fails.

    You can just run the dump command from some other box to begin with.

    That's what I do. I have one of my frontends doing the backup and
the dumpfiles all reside there.

    If the requirement is just to get back online quickly, the mysql
dump is really all that's needed since with the current state of
package installs you can get up and running pretty quick.

    It won't be completely functional right away but that's proabably
not what you need. You can work on the final fixes while the backend
is online and everything is sort of limping along.

> But in that case I'm screwed anyway as I don't have any kind of RAID setup
> so no database would be the least of my worries!
>
> Robert.
>
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[Tim Phipps-2]

David Segall wrote:

> Yesterday I thought I might have lost all my MythTV data. Fortunately,
> the fix was simple but it made me wonder how I could protect my set up
> from catastrophic failure.
>
> Operating a redundant fall back computer seems like overkill for this
> application but I don't see any other solution to ensuring that MythTV
> satisfies the SOAF [1] factor.
>
> How do you ensure that your fried MythTV can be restored in time for the
> nightly news and you have not lost the latest episode of the unmissable
> series that screened last night when you were out?
>

You can't, but to cover the most common causes of downtime I have the OS
on RAID1 (make sure you install grub on both and test it by yanking out
drives). Most data is on RAID5, the bits that are unraidable (different
sized disks) are used for soaps (thanks to storage groups). I also have
a 120GB disk in an external case for backups (doesn't cover DVD rips and
TV). I keep the backup drive in the greenhouse at the end of the garden.
In a plastic box under a bench so it should be protected from falling
debris from the house. If they both get destroyed I'll have more
problems than missing home videos. I've also burnt VCDs and photoCDs for
the grandparents of the really precious stuff.

For online integrity I run AIDE nightly and backup the Myth DB weekly.

For stability I run svn-0.21-fixes.

> [1] SOAF = Significant Other Acceptance Factor. Clearly, GAF and WAF are
> sexist so I thought of using PAF for Partner Acceptance Factor but that
>   did not cover the MythTV geeks who are living with their aged parents.

FAF - Family acceptance factor probably covers it. "Mummy, why is the
chooser not working?", "Daddy is just faf'ing around with his backend
again".

Cheers,
Tim.


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[Steve Smith-15]

On 02/04/2008, David Segall <david@...> wrote:

>
>
>  John Drescher wrote:
>  > On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 9:57 AM, David Segall <david@...> wrote:
>  >> Yesterday I thought I might have lost all my MythTV data. Fortunately,
>  >>  the fix was simple but it made me wonder how I could protect my set up
>  >>  from catastrophic failure.
>  >>
>  >>  Operating a redundant fall back computer seems like overkill for this
>  >>  application but I don't see any other solution to ensuring that MythTV
>  >>  satisfies the SOAF [1] factor.
>  >>
>  >>  How do you ensure that your fried MythTV can be restored in time for the
>  >>  nightly news and you have not lost the latest episode of the unmissable
>  >>  series that screened last night when you were out?
>  >>
>  > I have the os disks on raid 5 (although I am eventually going to
>  > remove that so I can spin down the disks to save power). And I have a
>  > cron job that makes a backup of the mysql database each night to yet
>  > another disk (not part of the raid). Every once and a while I email
>  > myself that file to my 6.5GB gmail account.
>
> So what happens if your motherboard is fried by a power supply failure
>  which was my fear yesterday? I thought that the disk drives would
>  probably be OK but I knew that I could not find an exact replacement for
>   the motherboard and I feared that I would need to do a complete
>  reinstall of the OS. I was not confidant that a reinstall could preserve
>  the existing data. I also needed to provide a TV set to watch tonight's
>  TV programs.
>  --
>
> David
>
> _______________________________________________
>  mythtv-users mailing list
>  mythtv-users@...
>  http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>

David,

Linux is pretty tolerant of hardware changes (unlike certain other
operating systems which refuse to even boot up, and then require
"re-activation"). Perhaps if it's not too expensive you might keep a
spare video card, as this appears to be on the most fiddle-prone areas
of building a myth system.
If the IDE/SATA interafcae of your new motherboard is not exotic it
should boot straight up.

Cheers

Steve
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[Steve Smith-15]

On 02/04/2008, Steve Smith <st3v3.sm1th@...> wrote:

> On 02/04/2008, David Segall <david@...> wrote:
>  >
>  >
>  >  John Drescher wrote:
>  >  > On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 9:57 AM, David Segall <david@...> wrote:
>  >  >> Yesterday I thought I might have lost all my MythTV data. Fortunately,
>  >  >>  the fix was simple but it made me wonder how I could protect my set up
>  >  >>  from catastrophic failure.
>  >  >>
>  >  >>  Operating a redundant fall back computer seems like overkill for this
>  >  >>  application but I don't see any other solution to ensuring that MythTV
>  >  >>  satisfies the SOAF [1] factor.
>  >  >>
>  >  >>  How do you ensure that your fried MythTV can be restored in time for the
>  >  >>  nightly news and you have not lost the latest episode of the unmissable
>  >  >>  series that screened last night when you were out?
>  >  >>
>  >  > I have the os disks on raid 5 (although I am eventually going to
>  >  > remove that so I can spin down the disks to save power). And I have a
>  >  > cron job that makes a backup of the mysql database each night to yet
>  >  > another disk (not part of the raid). Every once and a while I email
>  >  > myself that file to my 6.5GB gmail account.
>  >
>  > So what happens if your motherboard is fried by a power supply failure
>  >  which was my fear yesterday? I thought that the disk drives would
>  >  probably be OK but I knew that I could not find an exact replacement for
>  >   the motherboard and I feared that I would need to do a complete
>  >  reinstall of the OS. I was not confidant that a reinstall could preserve
>  >  the existing data. I also needed to provide a TV set to watch tonight's
>  >  TV programs.
>  >  --
>  >
>  > David
>  >
>  > _______________________________________________
>  >  mythtv-users mailing list
>  >  mythtv-users@...
>  >  http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>  >
>
> David,
>
>  Linux is pretty tolerant of hardware changes (unlike certain other
>  operating systems which refuse to even boot up, and then require
>  "re-activation"). Perhaps if it's not too expensive you might keep a
>  spare video card, as this appears to be on the most fiddle-prone areas
>  of building a myth system.
>  If the IDE/SATA interafcae of your new motherboard is not exotic it
>  should boot straight up.
>
>  Cheers
>
>
>  Steve
>

On a related note... HOW do you backup 500gb of data these days? Is a
spare drive really the most cost effective method?

Cheers
Steve
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[Dan Ritter]

On Thu, Apr 03, 2008 at 12:57:49AM +1100, David Segall wrote:
> Operating a redundant fall back computer seems like overkill for this
> application but I don't see any other solution to ensuring that MythTV
> satisfies the SOAF [1] factor.
>
> How do you ensure that your fried MythTV can be restored in time for the
> nightly news and you have not lost the latest episode of the unmissable
> series that screened last night when you were out?

Well, how much money do you want to spend on it?

Let's go all-out for a moment.

1. Dual power supply server, with two indpendent UPS and a
standby generator.

2. RAID-1 or RAID-10 disks to store everything. You double your
storage cost but your data is safe against most disk failures.

3. Hourly rsync of database dump and all recorded files to an
independent NAS, preferably running a different OS from your big
machine. Extra points for having the bandwidth to do this
offsite.

4. Spares, in static-proof, waterproof storage, preferably in a
separate building. Spare components, spare computers, spare
TVs... actually, strike spare TVs. You can reasonably rely on
having a big-box store sell you a TV that isn't quite what you
wanted for too much money when you need it.

5. As many independent program sources as you can arrange: OTA,
cable, satellite, perhaps a second cable source or equivalent if
you live in a place where that's an option.

-dsr-

--
Restore our Constitutional rights.

http://tao.merseine.nu/~dsr/eula.html is hereby incorporated by reference.
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[jedi-2]

On Thu, Apr 03, 2008 at 01:38:58AM +1100, David Segall wrote:

>
>
> John Drescher wrote:
> > On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 9:57 AM, David Segall <david@...> wrote:
> >> Yesterday I thought I might have lost all my MythTV data. Fortunately,
> >>  the fix was simple but it made me wonder how I could protect my set up
> >>  from catastrophic failure.
> >>
> >>  Operating a redundant fall back computer seems like overkill for this
> >>  application but I don't see any other solution to ensuring that MythTV
> >>  satisfies the SOAF [1] factor.
> >>
> >>  How do you ensure that your fried MythTV can be restored in time for the
> >>  nightly news and you have not lost the latest episode of the unmissable
> >>  series that screened last night when you were out?
> >>
> > I have the os disks on raid 5 (although I am eventually going to
> > remove that so I can spin down the disks to save power). And I have a
> > cron job that makes a backup of the mysql database each night to yet
> > another disk (not part of the raid). Every once and a while I email
> > myself that file to my 6.5GB gmail account.
> So what happens if your motherboard is fried by a power supply failure
> which was my fear yesterday? I thought that the disk drives would
> probably be OK but I knew that I could not find an exact replacement for
>   the motherboard and I feared that I would need to do a complete
> reinstall of the OS. I was not confidant that a reinstall could preserve
> the existing data. I also needed to provide a TV set to watch tonight's

...well, this is why you need to setup the disks so that your data is
segregated from the OS. As long as you've done that then you can
re-install the OS repeatedly and you'll be fine.

   You just need to know where to mount everything again afterwards.


> TV programs.
> --
> David
> _______________________________________________
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[John Drescher-2]

>  So what happens if your motherboard is fried by a power supply failure
>  which was my fear yesterday? I thought that the disk drives would
>  probably be OK but I knew that I could not find an exact replacement for
>   the motherboard and I feared that I would need to do a complete
>  reinstall of the OS. I was not confidant that a reinstall could preserve
>  the existing data. I also needed to provide a TV set to watch tonight's
>  TV programs.
>  --
With linux I have never worried about that. As long as the processor
is the same type moving disks to another system has never failed me
yet (and I have done this dozens of times at work to clone machines).
You may have to install a network driver or a graphics driver after
the move or recompile the kernel but that is usually it.

John
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[Sam Jacobs]

Hi,

On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 3:38 PM, David Segall <david@...> wrote:
>  So what happens if your motherboard is fried by a power supply failure
>  which was my fear yesterday? I thought that the disk drives would
>  probably be OK but I knew that I could not find an exact replacement for
>   the motherboard and I feared that I would need to do a complete
>  reinstall of the OS. I was not confidant that a reinstall could preserve
>  the existing data. I also needed to provide a TV set to watch tonight's
>  TV programs.
>  --
>  David

Just thought I'd chime in - I've starred this thread because although
backup isn't important to me at the moment, it's good to know about
how to do it properly.

Anyway, I know from experience that Linux isn't nearly as sensitive to
hardware changes as e.g. Windows. I once had to take the drives out of
an Athlon XP box and put them into an ancient Pentium 2 based box, and
the only things that didn't work were those that I'd complied
specifically for the Athlon. I did make sure I had a generic x86
kernel installed first - because as long as you can get to a shell you
can work your way back up from there.

You shouldn't have any problems at all if the only things that are
different are the motherboard and PSU.

Sam

--
Sam Jacobs on MythTV 0.21, UK Freeview, EIT-only EPG
mythbox: BE+FE, Mythbuntu 8.04, Athlon XP2000+@..., 512MB RAM,
nVidia GeForce 4MX (proprietary driver)
tuners on mythbox: Nebula DigiTV PCI, Elgato EyeTV for DTT Stick
(Hauppauge Nova-T USB Stick in disguise!)
smbx: FE, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Macbook Intel Core Duo@..., 2GB RAM
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[John Drescher-2]

>  On a related note... HOW do you backup 500gb of data these days? Is a
>  spare drive really the most cost effective method?
>
I would say so. With tape you have to invest several thousand dollars
before tape becomes cheaper than disk.

John
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[Mike Holden-4]

Steve Smith wrote:
> On a related note... HOW do you backup 500gb of data these days? Is a
> spare drive really the most cost effective method?

I have a Linksys NSLU2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSLU2 with plenty of
disk in a USB2 enclosure. It's cheap, low power, small, and can do other
stuff like dns, dhcp, ntp etc.

Your backup is then as simple as copying files over to another networked
box (or as complex as the backup scripts you want to write), and is
limited only by the size of the remote disk(s).

Depends a lot on the amount of data you need to back up, but burning files
to DVD seems like such a lot of effort when you can buy disks so cheaply
these days.

I never bothered with tape devices, since they used to be expensive, and
then disk became so cheap.
--
Mike Holden

http://www.by-ang.com - the place to shop for all manner of hand crafted
items, including Jewellery, Greetings Cards and Gifts


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[John Drescher-2]

>  ...well, this is why you need to setup the disks so that your data is
>  segregated from the OS. As long as you've done that then you can
>  re-install the OS repeatedly and you'll be fine.
>
>    You just need to know where to mount everything again afterwards.
>
If you have a dvd writer you should be able to backup your os
partition to a dvd or two and this will be very easy to recover.
Although I have done this several ways at work partimage is probably
the simplest way.

John
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[jedi-2]

On Wed, Apr 02, 2008 at 03:54:25PM +0100, Steve Smith wrote:

> On 02/04/2008, David Segall <david@...> wrote:
> >
> >
> >  John Drescher wrote:
> >  > On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 9:57 AM, David Segall <david@...> wrote:
> >  >> Yesterday I thought I might have lost all my MythTV data. Fortunately,
> >  >>  the fix was simple but it made me wonder how I could protect my set up
> >  >>  from catastrophic failure.
> >  >>
> >  >>  Operating a redundant fall back computer seems like overkill for this
> >  >>  application but I don't see any other solution to ensuring that MythTV
> >  >>  satisfies the SOAF [1] factor.
> >  >>
> >  >>  How do you ensure that your fried MythTV can be restored in time for the
> >  >>  nightly news and you have not lost the latest episode of the unmissable
> >  >>  series that screened last night when you were out?
> >  >>
> >  > I have the os disks on raid 5 (although I am eventually going to
> >  > remove that so I can spin down the disks to save power). And I have a
> >  > cron job that makes a backup of the mysql database each night to yet
> >  > another disk (not part of the raid). Every once and a while I email
> >  > myself that file to my 6.5GB gmail account.
> >
> > So what happens if your motherboard is fried by a power supply failure
> >  which was my fear yesterday? I thought that the disk drives would
> >  probably be OK but I knew that I could not find an exact replacement for
> >   the motherboard and I feared that I would need to do a complete
> >  reinstall of the OS. I was not confidant that a reinstall could preserve
> >  the existing data. I also needed to provide a TV set to watch tonight's
> >  TV programs.
> >  --
> >
> > David
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> >  mythtv-users mailing list
> >  mythtv-users@...
> >  http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
> >
> David,
>
> Linux is pretty tolerant of hardware changes (unlike certain other
> operating systems which refuse to even boot up, and then require
> "re-activation"). Perhaps if it's not too expensive you might keep a
> spare video card, as this appears to be on the most fiddle-prone areas

    I might even go so far as to say to have a complete spare machine.
I've setup my frontends with that in mind. For the two rooms I have
nearly identical machines. For the playroom it's not so critical but
it allows me to have a hot spare for the living room.

> of building a myth system.
> If the IDE/SATA interafcae of your new motherboard is not exotic it
> should boot straight up.

    Like anything, it's all a matter of how much you value the WAF.


    Something else to consider is that once my wife was hooked, it was
much easier to get her to agree to buying the better hardware and having
a duplicate. Once the first crappy cobbleware frontend killed itself,
she was the one pushing for the mini.
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