J G Miller <mil...@yoyo.ORG> wrote in news:jgpa33$7iq$
1...@dont-email.me:
> On Monday, February 6th, 2012, at 13:09:09h -0600, Ohmster wrote:
>
>> I will probably have to do what Dan said and just "bite it" and do a
>> reinstall.
I did not reinstall. Someone really nice send me a full ls -la to file
list but from a 64 bit CentOS 6.2 without servers like ftp. Still, that,
plus common knowledge as you describe in last paragraph got me through
this, my system works great.
> What happened to your last backup of /var ?
I do not have a "last backup". Still getting the hang of CentOS 6.2 and
like it a lot. Although I have been doing Linux full time (Always have a
full time learning machine w/desktop/servers/FQDNs, I am still not an
expert on Linux as I wish to be. Stuff like surviving while living alone,
over 50, no permenent employment, get in the way of having the time to
play and learn Linux like I want to. Plus I can only absorb so much at a
time before my eyes glaze over and then learning stops.
I really, really need help, someone to write for me a shell script that I
can cron to backup my system to an extra, empty 400Gb IDE disk. Maybe
with rsynch and how to restore it or pluck files from it. I should be
doing this on my own but must admit I lack the skill and confidence to do
it.
Before I can do this, I have an issue to keep an eye on. My fstab is
setup to mount my 200 and 400Gb empty IDE hard disks as such:
#
# /etc/fstab
# Created by anaconda on Thu Jan 5 03:04:31 2012
#
# Accessible filesystems, by reference, are maintained under '/dev/disk'
# See man pages fstab(5), findfs(8), mount(8) and/or blkid(8) for more
info
#
/dev/mapper/vg_paulspcworks-lv_root / ext4 defaults 1 1
UUID=fd5c8860-9966-4743-9e95-33accbdff2a5 /boot ext4 defaults
1 2
/dev/mapper/vg_paulspcworks-lv_home /home ext4 defaults 1 2
/dev/mapper/vg_paulspcworks-lv_swap swap swap defaults 0 0
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0
0
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0
0
sysfs /sys sysfs defaults 0
0
proc /proc proc defaults 0
0
/dev/sdb1 /mnt/400_Disk ext4 defaults 0 0
/dev/sdc1 /mnt/200_Disk ext4 defaults 0 0
(I instered a line break where word wrap would fold a line.)
Much of the time, this works. But this LVM stuff is driving me bats. My
home, /, and swap partitions are LVM on the same SATA 500Gb drive.
/dev/mapper points them with symlinks to /dev/dm-0 through dm-2. /boot is
an Linux file system on /devv/sda1. Boot is not a location but some sort
of UUID that I confess to be clueless about. It is on some disk,
somewhere. Probably /dev/sda since that is currently my LVM Linux drive
at this time. Yeah, boot is on sda1, revealed by fdisk.
Contents of /dev/mapper:
58 Mar 1 19:32 control
7 Mar 1 19:32 vg_paulspcworks-lv_home -> ../dm-2
7 Mar 1 19:32 vg_paulspcworks-lv_root -> ../dm-0
7 Mar 1 19:32 vg_paulspcworks-lv_swap -> ../dm-1
Somehow these dm files point to sda-0 through sda=2
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 64 512000 83 Linux
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 64 60802 487873536 8e Linux LVM
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
My issue is that sometimes when I boot, the 500Gb system SATA drive ends
up assigned to a different drive than /dev/sda and when this happens, the
system runs fine but I have no access to the 200 and/or 400Gb IDE disks
because the system drive takes sdb or sdc. If the darned system would
just stay the efff on /dev/sda, all would be peachy and I could work on a
backup system, but this LVM hopping from disk to disk at each boot is
making me nuts.
This /dev/mappper to /dev/dmx to sdx is driving me nuts. Why the eff
can't CentOS assign the darned system disk to a particular dev drive
spec, use it all the time, so I could fstab my extra drives and know they
will be right where they should be. I know this to be true because I
installed an alias 400 & 200 to "cd /mnt/400_Disk and when I use the
alias to get there, open in nautilus, or just go there manually, I do not
see the stuff I expect, using the GUI Disk Utility, I can see that the
drives have moved, all because of the LVM stuff NOT being assinged as a
hard link or setting to a particular device.
I perfectly understand my fstab at the point of tmpfs /dev/shm perfectly
and from that point down. It is what is above it that makes it impossible
to setup or work on a backup until I can assure that my 500gb LVM SATA
system disk will always be assigned to /dev/sda.
> And since you have your rpmdb still intact, just getting a list
> of packages which have directories in /var should not be too
> difficult to reset the permission and ownership appropriately.
>
> Most of the stuff in /var is owned by root:root so that should
> be the first thing you do a chgrp -R root /var, directories
> to 755 and files to 644 and then adjust individual cases as
> appropriate.
>
> Where it gets tricky is thing like bind9 which may need group
> ownership to bind or named, but you give the impression that
> you do not have such in depth knowledge.
Like I said, /var and it's subs is pretty much alright now and I have no
apparent issues to clean up so far as I know. Having a real ls -la root
through the entire /var/ directory file would be bitching on an Intel 32
bit box with servers installed, but I am thankful for what I got.
JG, you ask hard for me questions at times but you are very sincere in
your desire to help, and I really appreciate that buddy. Many of the
people in here teach you something once and expect you to remember
something you hardly ever use for years or to suddenly know all there is
to know about Linux and get a tad "testy" when the same user comes back
with the same or similar questions years later. You, aho, and bit twister
have *never* done that, you either help when you can, or skip the post if
you cannot. You do not flame other than put me on the spot when I have it
coming to me.
Steve Ackerman was a great assett, he rolled up his sleaves, took out an
old Linux box with an nvidia card in it, and at that time, Fedora would
not give good kernel headers anymore, rendering true nvidia driver
installs impossible. He did find a somewhat lengthly workaround and it
worked perfectly, but I think he considers his dues paid and now is
distant. Shame, great and intelligent guy. I will miss him.
Oh Gawd, late, and I have taxes, county health, my best customer's brand
new DSL modem must be provisioned to work on his account, attorneys, and
other issues to deal with tomorrow, must go to bed now, will post an
easy, quick, strange (to me) DIRCOLORS question and call it a night.