My brother broke everything!

Barrucadu · 2008-07-01 21:40:13

As I mentioned in another thread, I am using ramfs for /var/lib/pacman, /var/cache/pacman, /tmp, and /var/abs/local, with files being synced to disk in /etc/rc.local.shutdown. I also backup those folders into tarballs in /etc/rc.local.
My brother decided to turn off my computer by holding the power button about an hour ago. Obviously, everything in RAM was lost. I also just discovered that while the rest of the backups are fine, the backup for /var/lib/pacman is just missing for some reason. I have no package database.

My question is... Is it easier to rebuild the database by hand, or just reinstall Arch? Either way, I'll be thinking up some evil revenge plan for my brother...

moljac024 · 2008-07-01 22:05:27

Man that's just awful....why not think about somehow physically restricting access to the power button ?

This one always baffled me, how in UNIX world by default you have to know the administrator password for shutting down the computer the safe way....

Barrucadu · 2008-07-01 22:15:59

I've opted for manually rebuilding it, pacman -Sf'ing everything I've installed. I've told my mum (who had a go at him earlier for swearing at me and being very unreasonable) so he will be punished. I'll also pick a few of his favourite Xbox games and hide them until I'm finished.
I doubt he'll be doing it again.

insane · 2008-07-01 22:43:58

Maybe this incident brings up a problem for you. What will happen in the future if for same reason your Arch freezes and the only way to bring it back is a cold reset?

Procyon · 2008-07-02 01:34:13

As long as everything is backed up it should be fine.

Make a script that backs it up so that you can run it after changing the database. That way you don't have to worry until a safe reboot.

carlocci · 2008-07-02 02:36:59

maybe you could rsync the files every minute?

rson451 · 2008-07-02 02:54:41

you could manually disable the power button by unhooking it in the case, but that doesnt stop him from unplugging it.

sam · 2008-07-02 04:02:59

carlocci wrote:

maybe you could rsync the files every minute?

From a conceptional perspective, this is probably the right way to go. This way you get the speed of ram with the stability/protection of a hard drive. I think frequent rsyncing will slow down the computer and hurt program performance (more so than the speed advantage of using ramfs).

Out of curiosity, why did you pick to ramfs pacman related things? I was considering using ramfs to make my system faster, but I was going to use /usr/bin or /usr/lib (or at least portions of /usr/lib). By ramfsing parts of the filesystem, I could then write a script to sync every time I run pacman.

Allan · 2008-07-02 04:29:43

Do you really use pacman so often that having this in a ramfs saves you more time that you just spent reinstalling everything?

Barrucadu · 2008-07-02 07:06:08

Allan wrote:

Do you really use pacman so often that having this in a ramfs saves you more time that you just spent reinstalling everything?

Nope, I more or less read how to use ramfs and thought to myself "Hey, cool! Using RAM as a disk! Wow!" and picked something to experiment with. I wonder why the backup file was missing, it's more or less the same command as for the other ones; "tar cf /var/lib/pacman.tar /var/lib/pacman".

dolby · 2008-07-02 07:15:45

I would grab a shotgun and kill him the Arch Way.

Barrucadu · 2008-07-02 09:55:44

I just found out he somehow 'lost' my 30GB movie and 10GB music collection... I am seriously considering decapitation, some of those took YEARS to download!

hrist · 2008-07-02 10:27:27

dolby wrote:

I would grab a shotgun and kill him the Arch Way.

plus

Barrucadu wrote:

I just found out he somehow 'lost' my 30GB movie and 10GB music collection... I am seriously considering decapitation, some of those took YEARS to download!

+1 one from me for the Arch Way.

moljac024 · 2008-07-02 11:20:00

rson451 wrote:

you could manually disable the power button by unhooking it in the case, but that doesnt stop him from unplugging it.

How would you turn it on then ?

lucke · 2008-07-02 11:39:17

moljac024 wrote:

rson451 wrote:
you could manually disable the power button by unhooking it in the case, but that doesnt stop him from unplugging it.
How would you turn it on then ?

Short-circuiting, of course!

That's KISS too.

I used to keep my sync databases in tmpfs, made installing faster and there was no damage done with losing the contents.

Last edited by lucke (2008-07-02 11:40:51)

Daenyth · 2008-07-02 15:39:55

I saw a trick regarding putting a magnetic switch on the power button. If the magnet is near the button, it works normally. If there is no maget, it doesn't connect, so the circuit is broken. Oh and, go put a lock on your room ffs.

moljac024 · 2008-07-02 16:21:19

Daenyth wrote:

Oh and, go put a lock on your room ffs.

Or a bear trap. Either will work.

pheon · 2008-07-02 16:32:48

if your "beloved" brother has a computer, you should have a look at this:

http://www.macetech.com/blog/?q=node/46

rson451 · 2008-07-02 17:08:42

moljac024 wrote:

rson451 wrote:
you could manually disable the power button by unhooking it in the case, but that doesnt stop him from unplugging it.
How would you turn it on then ?

details..

czar · 2008-07-02 19:56:26

this is funny. I did the same thing but it was my own dumb falt. I thought i was having trouble getting the ram disk working so i switched to tmpfs in fstab which was working good. I had switched the script so that everything was moved to /tmp on the tmpfs but i forgot to change the shutdown script which restored everything back onto the hard disk. i rebooted the computer and rc.local.shutdown happily deleted my pacman folders but when it tried to copy from the "ram disk" @ /mnt/ramdisk it found out that nothing was there! I got pacman installed manually but i'm in the same sticky situation as the OP.

edit: do i need to pacman -Sf every binary on my box or just the ones that I setup post-intsall?

edit2: what a nightmare, i used pacfix to get a list of everything i've installed (and uninstalled on one list unfortunatly) and redownloaded everything but this seems to have reset a lot of my configs (when it would've normally created a .pacnew it just rewrote i guess) including obmenu, rc.conf, rc.local ect. boo hoo.

edit3: and it cleared out my entire /boot ??? wth is going on here, have i borked my system beyond recognition? why would that disapear. I just redownloaded grub and kernel26 but damn

Last edited by czar (2008-07-03 01:16:16)

Arch Linux

#1 2008-07-01 21:40:13

My brother broke everything!

#2 2008-07-01 22:05:27

Re: My brother broke everything!

#3 2008-07-01 22:15:59

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#4 2008-07-01 22:43:58

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#5 2008-07-02 01:34:13

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#6 2008-07-02 02:36:59

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#7 2008-07-02 02:54:41

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#8 2008-07-02 04:02:59

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#9 2008-07-02 04:29:43

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#20 2008-07-02 19:56:26

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