[Box-Admins] Permissions

[Ken Causey]

> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: [Box-Admins] Permissions
> From: Chris Muller <ma.chris.m at gmail.com>
> Date: Sat, February 05, 2011 2:55 pm
> To: Ken Causey <ken at kencausey.com>
> Cc: Squeak Hosting Support <box-admins at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
> 
> 
> Ok, so you're saying, we don't have a place to back-up to right now.
> How much space are we using?

Well, that depends on what you feel needs to be backed up.  Some might
feel the entire system should be backed up and that is currently 122GB. 
I'm satisfied if /home/ /etc/ /usr/local/ /var/www/ /root/ and
/var/lib/mailman/ are backed up at minimum.

>  I'm wondering if whether each box-admin
> team member could simply rsync to a dedicated directory on home
> machines, perhaps on daily cron schedule?

Well, it's a good time to admit I lied a bit.  I made a backup locally
last July, and I'm updating it right now.  Perhaps others feel
differently but there is no way I could do this daily and even weekly
would be an annoyance.  I'm backing up only the essential I mentioned
above which in total came to 36G in July.  Based on the local backup, if
you backup daily the changes (in one day) come to about 3-5GB per day.

> OR, we could use a pay service, but it might not be a bad idea to just
> try to get ONE copy somewhere.  We can't afford to lose
> source.squeak.org.
> 
> We won't procrastinate this anymore.  I remember now that Ken and
> Goran researched the backup a few years ago.  Did you guys end up
> using rsync?

rsync/rsnapshot.  We use this for the local backup and it is what Goran
used and I'm currently using rsync directly.

> 
> I'll try to poke around on the box this weekend.
> 
> BTW, who (company or individual?) and where, physically, are the
> boxe(s) located now?  Do we only have one box?

We have only one box and it is hosted by Hetzner.de.  Given your lack of
knowledge of that (it's possible I guess that you heard it mentioned but
made no notice of it I guess) it sounds like the situation regarding the
payment for the server has still not been sorted out and squeak eV is
still having to handle it.  I hope I'm wrong about that.  (I see Bert
has forwarded the email we wrote up when I left the Board, IIRC.)

Ken

> 
>   - Chris
> 
> On Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 1:34 PM, Ken Causey <ken at kencausey.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >> -------- Original Message --------
> >> Subject: Re: [Box-Admins] Permissions
> >> From: Chris Muller <asqueaker at gmail.com>
> >> Date: Sat, February 05, 2011 11:25 am
> >> To: Squeak Hosting Support <box-admins at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
> >>
> >>
> >> Göran, can you elaborate on the backup?  What are we using now and
> >> what's broken about it.
> >>
> >> HD's fail, backups are very important.  Are you saying we're not
> >> backed up right now?
> >>
> >> thanks..
> >
> > Yes, right now there is no offsite backup.  We have a local backup
> > system for much content in case we just screw up but that doesn't help
> > in the case of hard drive failure.
> >
> > Goran provided an offsite backup for a long time but lost the facility
> > when he changed jobs.  I've asked for help with this in the past with
> > little response.  It has been a while and perhaps it is time to ask
> > again.
> >
> > Ken
> >
> >>
> >> 2011/2/5 Göran Krampe <goran at krampe.se>:
> >> > On 02/04/2011 10:19 PM, Ken Causey wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >> We already have this in some sense.  Most individual projects are setup
> >> >> under their own home directories and to administer them it is generally
> >> >> sufficient to have access to the individual account, not superuser
> >> >> access.  For example the webteam manages the website without superuser
> >> >> access and release teams can update the ftp site generally without
> >> >> superuser access.  So for example if someone wanted to volunteer to work
> >> >> on bugs.squeak.org it would probably suffice to give them access to the
> >> >> mantis user account.
> >> >>
> >> >> That said the use of sudo has been brought up before and it is worth
> >> >> looking into.  My grand plans to setup new servers included every
> >> >> intention of making liberal use of sudo.  But I simply haven't gotten
> >> >> around to it.  I would welcome any insights anyone has on configuring
> >> >> sudo for our purposes.
> >> >>
> >> >> Ken
> >> >
> >> > IMHO the levels Ken describe are enough. If you are trusted with Linux admin
> >> > stuff then root it is IMHO. Let's not complicate things :)
> >> >
> >> > ...and we really need to fix a running offsite scheduled backup. ASAP.
> >> >
> >> > Sidenote: Btw, I now use Duplicity with Deja Dup on my laptop - works good
> >> > even for large files onto a vfat external USB drive.
> >> >
> >> > regards, Göran
> >> >
> >
> >