I know a lot of negative things have been said about .raq backup files, but does this mean they don't work at all? If I restore from a .raq file, will users and accounts all be back?

This is what I heard. Some said yes, working without any problem, for a few times. And some said NO!!!, not working at all.

And my personal experience is, it's not working.

rename the .raq file to a .tar, edit it and remove the raq headers and you have a tar file works every time

Steve

Thanks Steve. :)

Now I really have to recommend Tera-Byte -- you're giving me technical support even though I'm not a customer. I'll certainly get my next dedicated with your company.

Keeg,

rename the .raq file to a .tar, edit it and remove the raq headers and you have a tar file works every time

This does not restore a RAQ. You forgot to mention how much work it takes to take this tar and restore. It is not that simple. You are looking at hours worht of work.

RAQ backup files are a mixed blessing. I had an incident with a Cobalt RaQ 3i server where I needed to use a backup file to get another temporary server up and running very quickly. I had configured the RaQ to back up the entire hard drive every night via FTP, which worked very well. It would send the 400MB .raq file to the appropriate place at about 4:00 A.M. over the LAN.

When I actually needed to use the file, however, I was not on the LAN--I was out of town. Trying to open the 400MB file directly on the server through telnet was next to impossible; my connection was slow, and few text editors (that I know how to use) are designed to handle files that large. I certainly couldn't send it anywhere else. Fortunately, thanks to Google, I was able to find a shell script somewhere on the internet which removed the Cobalt headers for me.

Some time later, once the script was done processing and I had an actual .tar file, I was able to decompress what I thought would be the entire contents of my server's hard drive. No such luck. The automatic backup process only backed up the contents of the /home/sites directory, and a few others, which basically covers the contents of the sites being hosted on the server. It did not backup the Cobalt PostgreSQL database with site configuration information, mailing lists, users, and passwords. Nor did it backup any custom programs that I had installed on the server, i.e. MySQL and its associated databases. For me, this was a nightmare. I needed all of the above, and I couldn't be back in town to fix the server myself for several days. (With corrupt IP address configuration files, I could not log in remotely.)

So, I was able to get some sites up and running with a lot of typing, but it was not a fun experience. Be forewarned--make your own backups.

Aaron Greenspan

Aaron Greenspan

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Any good, third party backup programs for the RaQ 4?

Another question: Under Backup > Sheduled File Backup, I have selected "All server configuration". Doesn't this include all user accounts, or what exactly does this option back up?

we have a new backup solution for the raq's it will be posted on our forum before the weekend is out its bit of perl and such there is some setup but it will be all explained in the post, if you all want ill put it here as well its working great so far on all of our shared servers and the actual 4webspace server it wasnt developed by cobalt, my staff did it and my hat goes off to them for doing so its a hell of a piece of work.

Steve

What does the back up do? We have a solution about 2 weeks out that will restore boxes. It is a disaster recovery tool. If yours is a back up script, and ours does restore, we should combine them.

We could become the ultimate power in the universe!

Originally posted by UmBillyCord
We could become the ultimate power in the universe!
Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to backup and restore a Cobalt RaQ is insignificant next to the power of the force.

it sounds great Keeg !!!

TB rules :cartman: