Backups

NPG backups runs from the dedicated backup server: Lentil Lentil has 4 hot-swappable drive bays, which can contain SATA drives.

To put in a new (fresh drive):

1. Locate the oldest disk.
2. Make sure it is not mounted.
3. Open the appropriate drive door and slide out drive.
4. Put new drive in. (there are 4 screws holding the drive in place).
5. Slide it back in. Take note which Linux drive it registers as: /dev/sdb or /dev/sdc or /dev/sdd or /dev/sde
   NOTE: The order does NOT correspond with the slots, and this order can change after a reboot!
6. Run /usr/local/bin/format_archive_disk.pl <disk no> <device>
   I.E: /usr/local/bin/format_archive_disk.p 29 /dev/sde
7. Check that the drive is available: ls /mnt/npg-daily/29

The really old amanda-style backups are tar'ed, gzip'ed, and have weird header info. Looking at the head of them gives instructions for extraction. A script was written to extract and consolidate these backups. Shrinks hundreds of gigs down to tens of gigs, and zipping that shrinks it further. Very handy for OLD files we're not going to look at ever again.