Thread-topic: Encrypted backup using sparse image - Issue
User-agent: Microsoft-Entourage/12.1.0.080305
On 4/20/08 5:28 PM, "Demetri" <email@hidden> wrote:
> By definition my servers run in a secure enclave, with autologon
> turned on, with multiple login items and startup automation running
> 100% headless. The screen saver is passworded. If my servers reboot I
> have no issues with services coming back up.
If someone gets to your servers before the screensaver comes up, you have no
protection whatsoever. If the autologin fails for whatever reason, your
backup never runs, yet you don't know until you don't get notified. That can
create latencies of hours, whereas another, correctly done backup mechanism
can tell you that something went wrong as soon as it goes wrong, because
the notification mechanism is not tied into the backup mechanism.
>
> With iCal I can see what is going on instead of having to investigate
> (comb log files).
Nonsense. You can't tell where it failed any better than with cron or
launchd, and the default logging available to iCal - initiated scripts is
nothing close to what you get with launchd and/or cron.
>
> I put each server into its own calendar and then I publish them to a
> central system. I can then pull them up and look at them from a
> browser, my iCal app or even have them show on my iPhone.
None of that tells you if the job ran on any level. That only tells you
what's on the server calendar. "What's on my calendar" and "did the script
run correctly" are in fact, two different things.
>
> Ever thought about inviting your server to do an unscheduled backup?
All the time. QED with any number of methods, none of which require a
user-level login or relying on a screensaver timeout to prevent console
access.
> How about invite a server to fix its privileges, dump its caches or
> backup its filmaker pro databases?
There's a whole universe of ways to do this, none of which require human
login at the console. Just because you don't know what they are doesn't make
them worse or nonexistent.
> I can *see* if I am backing up my server and if it conflicts with some other
> timed event like log proessing for web stats.
Congratulations. You've managed to kludge together a user-space, unreliable
version of something that sysadmins have been doing for over 40 years, only
without requiring someone to manually log in, and can be managed from
anything with an SSH client. Which means, if need be, I can actually debug a
problem FROM a phone over a really bad connection.
And when iCal spinlocks for some reason, how do you know until you check in
again other than not getting an email notification? If ARD/VNC aren't
working, you can't easily tell why iCal's background notifier didn't run,
because there's no way to easily tell from the command line. If your script
isn't logging regularly, you have no way to tell what really happened,
because by default, apple events are rather invisible to the system logging
function.
> I can also easily see when the
> best time is to run an unsxheduled event. My documentation and my functions
> are all in iCal ... the definition of "live documentation" ;-)
And everyone else's is in the scripts they write and in crontab and/or
launchd items. It's just that theirs are using mechanisms designed from the
ground up to work, and they get things like syslog and other features for
free that your method doesn't get.
There are so many things that you are missing in your obsession with Rube
Goldberging a process that should be one of the most reliable ones on a
network that it would literally take weeks to correct.
--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
email@hidden
_______________________________________________
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
Macos-x-server mailing list (email@hidden)
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/macos-x-server/email@hidden
This email sent to email@hidden
