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PLEASE NOTE, THIS IS VERY OLD ARCHIVE INFORMATION AND MAY NOT FUNCTION ON NEW SERVERS

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getback - Restoring Files from Backup

As a Virtual Server administrator, you have the luxury of restoring files directly from our disk and tape backups. We have created a file retrieval command called getback which will walk you through the file retrieval process step by step.

To use getback, connect to your Virtual Server via Telnet or SSH and run the getback command like this. 

% getback FILENAME(S)

Substitute a single file or list of files FILENAME(S) above. getback will search the backup archives, find all matches, and display a date-sorted list of possible sources from which to restore the requested file(s). Both online (disk) and tape backup sources are listed.

  • Online Backups
    If an online (disk) source is selected, the file(s) is restored immediately. Any existing file(s) under the same name will be renamed with the form of filename.DDMonYY, where DDMonYY is the current date.

  • Tape Backups
    If a tape backup is selected, an e-mail message is automatically sent to our Support Staff requesting the file(s) be restored from tape. The file(s) is usually restored within 2 business days.

NOTE: A Service Charge is applicable when files are restored from tape backup. Restoring from disk backup is done free of charge. The Service fee is: $100.00/file. Normally, you will never need to restore a file from tape backup. If you do, then you should consider the cost and evaluate if it would be less expensive to recreate the content that was lost.


Examples

If you want to list all backups we have made of the file ~/www/htdocs/index.html, do the following. 

% getback /www/htdocs/index.html
        size    modified        file

10) 26 Nov 1997, on tape (fee required)
        46964   24 Nov 1997     usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs/index.html

 9) 2 Dec 1997, on tape (fee required)
        46964   24 Nov 1997     usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs/index.html

 8) 7 Dec 1997, on tape (fee required)
        46957   6 Dec 1997      usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs/index.html

 7) 13 Dec 1997, on tape (fee required)
        51730   12 Dec 1997     usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs/index.html

 6) 20 Dec 1997, on tape (fee required)
        50766   19 Dec 1997     usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs/index.html

 5) 31 Dec 1997, on tape (fee required)
        51003   19 Dec 1997     usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs/index.html

 4) 10 Jan 1998, on tape (fee required)
        30019   6 Jan 1998      usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs/index.html

 3) 16 Jan 1998, on tape (fee required)
        30247   16 Jan 1998     usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs/index.html

 2) 16 Jan 1998, online
        30247   16 Jan 1998     usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs/index.html

 1) 17 Jan 1998, online
        30247   6 Jan 1998      usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs/index.html

Enter location to get file(s) from, or 0 to quit:

You can restore more than one file at a time. The following command lists the backup copies of both the ~/usr/mail/rus and ~/usr/mail/dave files. 

% getback /usr/mail/rus /usr/mail/dave
        size    modified        file

10) 26 Nov 1997, on tape (fee required)
        59020   25 Nov 1997     usr/mail/rus
        15803   26 Nov 1997     usr/mail/dave

 9) 2 Dec 1997, on tape (fee required)
        81871   1 Dec 1997      usr/mail/rus
        6273    2 Dec 1997      usr/mail/dave

 8) 7 Dec 1997, on tape (fee required)
        14870   6 Dec 1997      usr/mail/rus
        153284  7 Dec 1997      usr/mail/dave

 7) 13 Dec 1997, on tape (fee required)
        76540   12 Dec 1997     usr/mail/rus
        3527    13 Dec 1997     usr/mail/dave

 6) 20 Dec 1997, on tape (fee required)
        118765  19 Dec 1997     usr/mail/rus
        9390    20 Dec 1997     usr/mail/dave

 5) 31 Dec 1997, on tape (fee required)
        41787   30 Dec 1997     usr/mail/rus
        0       31 Dec 1997     usr/mail/dave

 4) 10 Jan 1998, on tape (fee required)
        0       9 Jan 1998      usr/mail/rus
        0       10 Jan 1998     usr/mail/dave

 3) 16 Jan 1998, on tape (fee required)
        23028   15 Jan 1998     usr/mail/rus
        7251    16 Jan 1998     usr/mail/dave

 2) 16 Jan 1998, online
        23028   15 Jan 1998     usr/mail/rus
        7251    16 Jan 1998     usr/mail/dave

 1) 17 Jan 1998, online
        23028   15 Jan 1998     usr/mail/rus
        28444   17 Jan 1998     usr/mail/dave

Enter location to get file(s) from, or 0 to quit:

You can also restore backup copies of an entire directory. 

% getback /www/htdocs/
        size    modified        file

10) 26 Nov 1997, on tape (fee required)
        9875108 26 Nov 1997     usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs

 9) 2 Dec 1997, on tape (fee required)
        9958610 2 Dec 1997      usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs

 8) 7 Dec 1997, on tape (fee required)
        12694619 7 Dec 1997     usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs

 7) 13 Dec 1997, on tape (fee required)
        15148343 13 Dec 1997    usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs

 6) 20 Dec 1997, on tape (fee required)
        16437181 20 Dec 1997    usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs

 5) 31 Dec 1997, on tape (fee required)
        17627644 31 Dec 1997    usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs

 4) 10 Jan 1998, on tape (fee required)
        14711305 10 Jan 1998    usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs

 3) 16 Jan 1998, on tape (fee required)
        14800035 16 Jan 1998    usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs

 2) 16 Jan 1998, online
        14800035 16 Jan 1998    usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs

 1) 17 Jan 1998, online
        15181492 17 Jan 1998    usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs

Enter location to get file(s) from, or 0 to quit: 




Using the /backup of your virtual Server to restore files


Subject: copying with tar

Let's say you have need to copy a user's directory from the on disk backup 
to replace the user's directory.  In this example the user nuked all his files or 
had a remote exploit that allowed someone else to run rm -rf / as the user.  
This is a real example and has already happened to the user two to three times.

We are going to assume the username is image000.  Some versions of tar
use a tape drive as the default file, but we want to be sure and use
stdin/stdout (hence the f - option below).

# (cd /backup/home; tar cpf - image000)|(cd /usr/home; tar xpf -)

The parentheses are very important, so don't leave them out.  
They cause the collection of commands within to be performed as one command.  
That is why the pipe is outside the parentheses.  

The lefthand side of the pipe will change to the /backup/home directory and 
create an archive that contains the backed up version of the user's home directory.  
It sends the archive to standard out.  In other words, the archive is buffered 
in memory instead of written to disk.

The righthand side of the pipe changes to the /usr/home directory and
extracts from the archive that it received on standard in.  The user's
home directory is restored as are all the proper permissions.  

Files that are supposed to belong to root are root owned and files that 
belong to the user are user owned.  The devices will be restored, as well.  
Because this command contains commands for changing directories, you safely 
can run it from any working directory.  It does have the side effect of leaving 
you in the destination directory where the command completed.  When you create 
an archive of hard linked files, it stores the real file, not the link.  So when 
you extract from that archive it creates real files that take up space.  Specifically, 
the user's perl installation is takeing more diskspace than another user's perl.  
A relink needs to be done.

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PLEASE NOTE, THIS IS OLD ARCHIVE INFORMATION AND MAY NOT FUNCTION ON NEW SERVERS