New Root disk for UNIXPC (and a little story to boot [no pun])

[Lenny Tropiano]

In article <632 at tsnews.Convergent.COM> bri at tsnews.Convergent.COM (Brian Rice) writes:
|>
|>Um... I think I would go with Lenny's version (No offense intended to Mr. 
|>Becker) merely because of the sort/discard option he suggests.  However,
|>I don't recall seeing the word 'backup' in either of the follow-ups!
|>I am currently running the Maxtor 2190's (Thanks Thad) and am also in
|>agreement with Lenny on this: the seek time is not very good. All that
|>space on the other hand...

You're right, but I think those who are thinking about this procedure 
know that you copying the root filesystem from one drive
to another, therefore by the very nature of that operation you have a
backup.   :-)

I guess the disclaimer should be ...

***************************************************************************
  DON'T FORMAT, MKFS, OR DESTROY YOUR ORIGINAL ROOT FILESYSTEM UNTIL YOU 
  VERIFY THE NEW ONE ACTUALLY WORKS AND EVERYTHING YOU WANT IS THERE!
***************************************************************************

Yes, folks even the best of us goof once and a while.  I remember helping
a good friend of mine swap some HD's around, while I was at her
console (su'd as root) I decided to re-mkfs the slice 2 on the second
drive (for those that don't know it's /dev/rfp012).  Well as things go in
those intense 'hacking' sessions... a slip up of one little number and POOF!  
Well I hate to admit it (and now as she is probably reading this, she's 
rolling in her seat ...) I typed:

# mkfs /dev/rfp002

Tick... tick... tick.  Aborting the procedure prematurely, but too late
to save anything ... And feeling very embarrased, as well as very
much responsible -- I non-chelantly [sic] said, "Do you have a recent
backup of your root filesystem?"  Of course I was handled the 90+ 
diskettes.  [I guess that's better than most UNIXpc'ers]  Two hours and
then some later, things were back to some semblance ...

The moral of the story is ... BACKUP, IT'S WORTH THE EFFORT!

-Lenny
-- 
| Lenny Tropiano           ICUS Software Systems        lenny at icus.ICUS.COM |
| {ames,pacbell,decuac,sbcs,hombre,rayssd}!icus!lenny   attmail!icus!lenny  |
+------ ICUS Software Systems --  PO Box 1;  Islip Terrace, NY  11752 ------+