Jihad needs scientists

In article <qbjfu2564n2re0pk89qnuc20r1ggdjji45@4ax.com>,
MassiveProng <MassiveProng@thebarattheendoftheuniverse.org> wrote:

On Thu, 01 Mar 07 12:34:42 GMT, jmfbahciv@aol.com Gave us:

Each time you copy, the file has been in a writable mode.


Wrong. The host file has a snapshot taken of it. If large, it will
get read sequentially as the copy takes place. The TARGET file must
be "open" to be "created".

The original file is NOT EVER in "open" mode, and was not ever in a
"writable mode" during a simple copy function.

If a backup has to be restored, it is the original file which has
disappeared. Now, which file are you restoring? It's the one
that was written.

I never believed that this subject matter was so difficult to
understand. None of our customers had problems. Not only
did I work with bit gods, we must have had customer gods.

That is why any file which IS "open" and in write mode cannot be
accessed by any other user until said write has been performed, and
the file released.

Database "tables" are the exception,

The case that I brought up was database; with databases, the data
is always a moving target that can never be snap-shot with accuracy.

where the database engine
"opens" the table file, and allows what could be called a "co-edit"
session on the table. At that point, the lockout is at the "record"
level, and the same table line cannot be "co-edited", even though the
table itself can. That is all managed within the database engine,
however, not at the file level. This is why database hard drives can
become very fragmented. Tables get updated a couple kB or less at a
time. That makes for a very spotty file system (well, it used to)
NTFS changed all that, and Linux never suffered the problem.

Normal OS file rules prohibit file "co-edit" sessions.

Nope. It can be done but you really have to know what you're
doing. We implemented a system calls that would help different
programs "share" files.

/BAH

 

[Phil Carmody]

jmfbahciv@aol.com writes:

Each time you copy, the file has been in a writable mode.

Explain the above in the context or WORM media.

This will be funny...

Phil
--
"Home taping is killing big business profits. We left this side blank
so you can help." -- Dead Kennedys, written upon the B-side of tapes of
/In God We Trust, Inc./.

 

[Phil Carmody]

jmfbahciv@aol.com writes:

You are in error. Last access is an important datum.

Not universally. I'd be tempted to say very very rarely,
except in a few forensic situations.

Are you familiar with the concept of reading filesystems
read-only? Are you suggesting that it's important that
no-one ever do so, lest they lose that important datum?

Phil
--
"Home taping is killing big business profits. We left this side blank
so you can help." -- Dead Kennedys, written upon the B-side of tapes of
/In God We Trust, Inc./.

 

[Phil Carmody]

Phil Carmody <thefatphil_demunged@yahoo.co.uk> writes:

Are you familiar with the concept of reading filesystems

s/reading/mounting/

--
"Home taping is killing big business profits. We left this side blank
so you can help." -- Dead Kennedys, written upon the B-side of tapes of
/In God We Trust, Inc./.

 

[Ken Smith]

In article <es94vp$8qk_001@s1006.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>,
<jmfbahciv@aol.com> wrote:

In article <es6qts$kgg$4@blue.rahul.net>,
kensmith@green.rahul.net (Ken Smith) wrote:
In article <es6ggr$8qk_003@s985.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>,
jmfbahciv@aol.com> wrote:
In article <es45pa$fiu$4@blue.rahul.net>,
kensmith@green.rahul.net (Ken Smith) wrote:
[.....]
If it's a rumor, then the experts believe it, too.

That happens all the time. Lots of people get fooled by good sounding
stuff that they have never really experimented on.

This radio station has experts who know the subject. For example,
and IRS person is on for shows about income taxes. A lawyer for
estate planning. A doctor for medical subjects. Computer geeks
for computer usages. And the people are local which means the
people know each other. This station does a lot of shows
with the retire auld farts in mind. There still is a Santa
Claus in some areas of the US.

If you had google, I'd suggest you google on "N rays"

Why are you rejecting the fact that a radio station has experts
on their shows to give the local audience the services they need?

I am questioning the *claim* because I have listened to the radio and
heard "experts". Said "experts" can be wrong.

*** begin insert ***
RenĂŠ Prosper Blondlot (1849-1930) was a French physicist who claimed to
have discovered a new type of radiation, shortly after Roentgen had
discovered X-rays. He called it the N-ray, after Nancy, the name of the
town and the university where he lived and worked. Blondlot was trying to
polarize X-rays when he claimed to have discovered his new form of
radiation. Dozens of other scientists confirmed the existence of N-rays in
their own laboratories. However, N-rays don't exist. How could so many
scientists be wrong? They deceived themselves into thinking they were
seeing something when in fact they were not. They saw what they wanted to
see with their instruments, not what was actually there (or, in this case,
what was not there
**********

This sort of thing goes on all the time. Even experts have biases and
fool themselves all the time.

So you are claiming that the tax lawyers on that show, whose
expertise is almost exclusively for the aged, does not know
anything about social security and the latest changes?

No, I'm saying he may have fallen victim to a rumor on one subject. It
happens. Its just like the guys above with their N rays. These were good
scientists they knew a lot about science but got it dead wrong. It
happens.

Are
you claiming, with no evidence since you haven't listened to
any of those shows, that the computer geeks who answer questions
don't know anything about computer systems?

I never made the claims you are suggesting so I can say "no". Go back a
read what I actually wrote. Your claim of my not having listened to
"those shows" may be true or false depending on what you mean by "those
shows". I have listened to some show like the ones you decribe but it is
unlikely I've listened to the ones you did.

snip attempt to smoke and mirror the thread

This is a perfect example of your attitude in reading what I
write. You start out with the premise that anything I write
is 100% wrong and continue from there.

You are wrong about this. I do not assume that you are 100% wrong. If
you continue as you have, however, I will assume an ever increasing
fraction of what you say is wrong.

The example that started this thread drift was the local
problem of crooks "stealing" signatures off checks. I still
don't understand exactly how this is done nor how the
new kind of pen prevents it. The police are involved and
the radio station has given people
ways to prevent this from happening. This is what the station
does. And everybody listens to them; it's good radio business
to cater to your customers.

I still say that the special pens were just a rumor. You just have to
sign with a standard blue ball point.

/BAH

--
--
kensmith@rahul.net forging knowledge

 

In article <es848a$2hl$4@blue.rahul.net>,
kensmith@green.rahul.net (Ken Smith) wrote:

In article <es6mqn$8qk_001@s985.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>,
jmfbahciv@aol.com> wrote:
In article <es0bs3$joa$1@blue.rahul.net>,
kensmith@green.rahul.net (Ken Smith) wrote:
[....]
Where in the anual report? I can't find any such statement in there.

Intel is divided into divisions. Compare each division. The one
that has the controller product line does more business than the
one that has the PC product line.

I still can't find it. I searched the PDF version of the report for word
"division" and nothing like that came up. Do you have a page number?

You have to read the whole report and then compare the different
product areas.

If you restore the file that caused the problem, you have restored
the problem and have to start all over again.

Now we can perhaps start to talk about repairing a system. Problems are
often like cancers. A problem with a file can cause a database to get
worse over time. If you back up to the one where the damage is limited,
you can then repair the file at fault and start working forwards. You
also have the option of going back to an even earlier version and starting
there.

Not for data bases such as SABRE. Airline reservation systems
don't care about data that is already in the past. It's too
complicated to go into detail. Now consider that a virus is
in the midst of your files you are going to restore.

[....]
They may both need to be done but they are two different subjects. You
need to be able to get from the broken system to the situation as it
should be.

Now, consider the case that no backups have the system saved in the
state that it should be. This is not an unusual situation. My guess
is that this is the normal situation with any Micshit software under
a EULA and update agreement.


For a Microsoft system, the only option that works is a bit by bit image
of the hard drive made by some non-Microsoft code.

Again, if you do a bit by bit type of backup, you also save the
bad spots of the disk.

The OS refuses to let
you back up some of the important stuff. Since it is Windows and not
Linux, we know that the system was not in the state it should be for the
get go. The best you can do is put the mess back the way it was.

And what if the source of the problem is the way it was?

On a Windows system, you always want to keep your data on a different
drive than the OS. This make backing up the good stuff much easier.

How do you separate the data from the OS when windows has the
annoying habit of merging both?

When a Microsoft system goes very bad the first thing to try is restoring
to the previous image. This doesn't mean that you have really fixed the
problem but it does let you see if the previous version would work at all.
You may have one of those rare cases where the hardware has failed.

Very often you are forced to reinstall a bunch of software and then copy
the data back in from the backup.

How are you going to choose which files to copy from the backup if
it's bit-by-bit save of the disk? You can't.

[....]
You may be able to do this without doing a restore if
redundent information exists. If you can't do that, the first step
is usually to step back in time to where the problem hadn't happened yet.

What if you can't pinpoint when the problem started?

Do you mean when the data's logical structure was first damaged? If you
have old backups, you can always step back to a very early version. This
is rarely needed because you can loopback and mount different versions to
compare them.



What if it
is a problem that you can't control?

What do mean by that?

It can be many things. The OS has a bug; the network has a bug;
your apps created an environment that causes the glitch in cooperation
with timing, the phase of the moon, and other events.

Assuming you mean some bit of software that simply
takes it in its head to mess things up from time to time, there are still
things that you can do. All such things are very ugly.

Some days, problems can happen with the position of a certain pattern
of bits in a particular location of memory.

You can then step forwards repeating the transactions.

And what if the transactions carefully save on backup tapes are
incorrect? Consider monetary exchange rates and changes.

This is why you make more than one copy of things.

I give up. I'm trying to deal with the obvious case that the
problem has been backed up. It doesn't matter how many copies
you have nor how many times you restore it, the mess maker
will still be there and it will continue make the mess which
will cause you to restore it again....ad nauseum.

[...]
How exactly did it become more complex? All the issues that exist today
existed in the past.

No it didn't. We did not have the technology to do millions of
transactions/minute.

This doesn't increase complexity. It only increases speed.

How quickly can you stop a semi truck going at the speed of light
in a vacuum? Start your timing just notice a problem.

Most of the time we could hit the
panic button and physically shut down a runaway system.

That was always a near useless option.

You are telling me that this was useless? I still pull the plug
when I see somebody sniffing my bits over the net.

You need to make sure this is
never used. The odds of trouble being made by humans is greater than that
it is made by the computer. When you put a "panic button" on something
you are admitting defeat.

You don't have a clue about anything having to do with the computer
system biz.

<snip snot>

You are simply wrong in this. You must have another source of information
to make the correction. If you don't have a source of information to make
the corrections with, it is completely imposible to make the corrections.
There are no if ands or buts about it.

You are not thinking about scheduling airplanes with the subset
of scheduling passengers.

What the heck are you talking about now!

I am talking about the application I referred to in another post.
It was called SABRE. It was probably the first computer aided
transaction processing system.

You either have information or
you don't. If you have the needed information you can make the
corrections if you don't have that information you can't.

There are lots of problems and you aren't even aware of most of them.

Name 2!

oh, jezusfuckinghchrist. Go back and read the posts.

Like I thought. You don't have 2.

We had thousands.

/BAH

 

[krw]

In article <es928h$8ss_001@s1006.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>,
jmfbahciv@aol.com says...

In article <es829g$2hl$2@blue.rahul.net>,
kensmith@green.rahul.net (Ken Smith) wrote:
In article <87fy8paqu8.fsf@nonospaz.fatphil.org>,
Phil Carmody <thefatphil_demunged@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
kensmith@green.rahul.net (Ken Smith) writes:
ls -lu

I assume you had a point.

I think his point is that access time is part of the metadata
that accompanies the file.

It is not stored into the data part of the file. The file's sectors are
not rewritten so there is no change to that part. I believe that it is
the time you close the file and not the time you opened it that actually
ends up stored BTW. None of this matters to the backup method I
suggested.



So we have 3 cases:
- If it doesn't change the last-accessed time, then the "last-
accessed time" is in fact a falsity;
- If it changes the last-accessed time and stores the new access,
then the restored file will not be what it was a backup of;
- If it changes the last-accessed time but doesn't store the new
time, then the file in the backup is not identical to the
filesystem that it is a backup of.
All three of these are unsatisfactory. Therefore I contend that
this field is indeed not a useful field when it comes to considering
the behaviour of backups.

No, this is all silly. The backup I have been refering to is not cover in
the cases in your list. What I suggested was a complete image of the
drive.

That has the problem of also preserving the bad spots of the disk.

Modern disks don't show their "bad spots" to the system. They're
replaced from a cache of hidden sectors as they fail. This doesn't
mean it isn't possible to lose data when one fails though.

I'm assuming that you do want an image of the disk and not drive.

This would store the times as they were at the time archive was
made and not change anything about any of them

The only times that matter for backup are the time of creation and the
last modification. It doesn't matter when the last access happened.

You are in error. Last access is an important datum.

--
Keith

 

[krw]

In article <hpmfu2d1ci78p6oiku9qe8acr9p4u2tcc8@4ax.com>,
MassiveProng@thebarattheendoftheuniverse.org says...

On Thu, 1 Mar 2007 11:53:37 -0500, krw <krw@att.bizzzz> Gave us:

Not if it's been cleared via "check 21". The check paper check is
turned into bits and the hard copy destroyed. Learn something for
once, will ya?



Fuck you.

No thanks! You're much too icky for anyone to get that close.

Like I said... MY BANK allows me to get the check if I
ASK FOR IT.

With Check21 the original CHECK NO LONGER EXISTS, you MORON!

So SHUT THE FUCK UP, you totally retarded twit!

Why, so you don't look like the ignorant twit you are?

--
Keith

 

[krw]

In article <es92g1$8ss_002@s1006.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>,
jmfbahciv@aol.com says...

In article <MPG.2050cf07addd0e6298a031@news.individual.net>,
krw <krw@att.bizzzz> wrote:
In article <0sccu2tencv0vqes1nru8uec7if9e8f4cm@4ax.com>,
MassiveProng@thebarattheendoftheuniverse.org says...
On Wed, 28 Feb 2007 15:02:48 -0500, krw <krw@att.bizzzz> Gave us:

In article <97v6u2hhdaf437oki5ujqt4q3gkjghn3dv@4ax.com>,
MassiveProng@thebarattheendoftheuniverse.org says...
On Mon, 26 Feb 07 12:36:17 GMT, jmfbahciv@aol.com Gave us:


The wrinkle to the new process is that the checks have stopped
traveling.


Bullshit. My landlord gets a check, and his bank submits it to my
bank who has it ON FILE RIGHT NOW, I get an image of the check in my
mailed monthly statement, and can look up a full size image of all my
checks online.

Dumber-than-a-dim-bulb, you're wrong.

No. You are. I can even request the return of the check.

Not if it's been cleared via "check 21". The check paper check is
turned into bits and the hard copy destroyed.

This is the bug in the process, IMO. The process depends on the human,
who is scanning the physical paper, to destroy it.

It doesn't matter if the physical check is destroyed or not. The
routing and account numbers are all that matters. The paper check is
only a carrier for those.

--
Keith

 

[krw]

In article <lsmfu2lmogbnqnts573rvsgsogl6kod5hk@4ax.com>,
MassiveProng@thebarattheendoftheuniverse.org says...

On Thu, 1 Mar 2007 11:53:37 -0500, krw <krw@att.bizzzz> Gave us:


You said above that you do. Liar! (nothing new to see here folks,
move along)

Fuck you! I did NOT EVER say that I wrote checks at a store in
these forums EVER, you stupid fuck! I am not the only one you have
been arguing with, dipshit.

You really need to get back on your meds, Dimbulb. You're going to
have a stroke.

You said you will get canceled checks returned to you, which is *not*
true. Any that aren't routed through entirely local bank branches
(and many of these) will *not* be returned to you because the
physical check is destroyed in the electronic routing process.

Put down the booze, and learn to read again.

No booze in months, Dimbulb. You and Rich are the NG drunks.

No gas and electric, no grocery, no gas... no NOTHING. The only
check I write is to my landlord, you retarded fuck, and I never said
anything otherwise.

You certainly implied it was the general case that you get canceled
checks, Dimbulb.

So fuck off!

So much tension, such a little dick.

--
Keith

 

[nonsense@unsettled.com]

Ken Smith wrote:

In article <e569b$45e79d2a$49ecf5e$12334@DIALUPUSA.NET>,
nonsense@unsettled.com <nonsense@unsettled.com> wrote:

Ken Smith wrote:


In article <5685e$45e760f9$4fe7431$8325@DIALUPUSA.NET>,
nonsense@unsettled.com <nonsense@unsettled.com> wrote:


Phil Carmody wrote:



kensmith@green.rahul.net (Ken Smith) writes:



ls -lu

I assume you had a point.

snip blather



So his point wasn't worth getting.

Every time you touch a file it is written to.

Touching a file is sufficient to introduce error.


The backup method I have been suggeting has no such problem. Making an
image of a drive does not risk changing its contents.

BTW: Since the time is not stored within the body of the file, the
sectors that contain the body of the file are not written. It is only the
directory information that is updated. You can have an error in that
sector.


So directory all errors are of no concern to you then.


No, I didn't say this. Remember that my suggested method of doing a
backup is to image the entire drive. The error that is the hardest to
spot is a file that now has different contents than before but not the
correct contents.

Changes to the directory information that matter are easily detected and
aren't cancerous like errors in databases can be.

The directory *is* a database. Scribble your pointer and have
fun finding your file. Even more fun if it points to the middle
of some other similar database file.

 

[krw]

In article <es93kh$8qk_001@s1006.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>,
jmfbahciv@aol.com says...

In article <MPG.2050c846d665a64098a02e@news.individual.net>,
krw <krw@att.bizzzz> wrote:
In article <es6g5o$8qk_001@s985.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>,
jmfbahciv@aol.com says...
In article <MPG.204fae3c3b2b61c298a019@news.individual.net>,
krw <krw@att.bizzzz> wrote:
In article <es160h$8qk_005@s924.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>,
jmfbahciv@aol.com says...
In article <MPG.204cc17fb115629c98a000@news.individual.net>,
krw <krw@att.bizzzz> wrote:
In article <erul1i$8qk_008@s965.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>,
jmfbahciv@aol.com says...

So far, I haven't been
able to develop any process that people, such as my parents, will
be able to use.

How about PayPal, or the equivalent?

Doesn't that involve online-edness?

Likely. I don't know if there is a way around this.

The more I investigate, the more I'm finding that there is no way.
Depending on power and networks being up just to eat is not
my idea of self-sufficiency.


I smell a bad odour w.r.t.
PayPal because it's name is being used as spam for gathering
financial data.

I've never seen any evidence of either, other than the billions
phishing attempts. ...just don't bite the bait!

Right. But if you're doing this paypal stuff for your financial
business, how in the hell are you going to distinguish between
fishing and acutal business? This is an area that nobody seems
to be addressing...at least I can't smell a whiff of it looking
at it from the outside.

Simple: If email is from PayPal it's a phishing attempt Email from
eBay has your username embedded in it (a simple mail filter puts
those phishing attempts where they belong).

[puzzled emoticon here] Why would phishes put my username
into the contents? It can't be that simple .

They don't.

1) Any email from paypal has a worm in it.

2) Legitimate email from eBay has your username in it. I have an
email filter that searches for mail (from_ebay.com AND (NOT
userid_in_body) and throws it away.

I haven't studied PayPal yet. My mother is
quickly coming to the conclusion that checks are not a Good Thing.
They do everything checks, including buy groceries. I don't
like her carrying cash because of the gangs that have been
imported from Viet Nam and Mexico.

Credit cards are likely the most secure, personally.

She has never had a credit card.

It's time to get her one.

How? You need credit to get credit.

It's not impossible to get first credit, even if she has to start
with a secured card.

Just make sure it's paid on time.

That's going to be the next problem as their ailing increases.
I've tried to convince her that paying some bills for the whole
year is the smartest thing to do but Dad is always nixing it
and she listens to him.

There are several options that would let you monitor/help with the
use/payment.

My next experiment is to investigate debit cards that you buy
outright and have no information embeded that can tie the
transaction back to a personal bank account.

Watch out for the scam where the numbers are copied off the rack
where they're displayed.

I first have to find the rack. This would have been a job for
super-JMF to go hunting for me .

They have (or had at Christmas) them in the grocery stores here.

I'll look. It seems like you have to buy their personal cards
before you can do any monetary exchanges these days.

You might also try your bank for Cisa/MC logoed ones.

But those can be tied to the accounts in the bank. Aren't they?

No, there are pre-paid Visa and MCs. They're sold as gift cards but
are accepted like any other Visa/MC.

I'm beginning to think that my approach is going to be the best
way. Dump some cash into the coffers of the biller twice a year.
That's what I'm doing at the moment and it seems to work for
everything but credit cards. Congress passed some law that
edicts any 6-month positive balance has to be sent back to
the credit card user.

Really?

Really. It's a fucking PITA because I have to wait for the bill
to come before I can pay it. The usual turnaround time is less
than 2 weeks which also includes the snail mail time.

I've had a positive balance on my corporate Amex for
years. Can't figure how to get rid of it.

Oh, now that's interesting. There must be a different set of
rules for business than for individuals.

I'm sure there is. Perhaps it's like medical insurance; the account
is owned by the corporation and AMEX is only the administrator.

Oh, and my water bill. Their software
can't handle funcking negative amounts; it drops the negative sign.


I can believe it. They likely think $0.00 is a positive balance
due too (queue story about the check written for $0.00 to pay the
$0.00 balance due, threatened with collections).

[stunned emoticon bursts out in unbelieving-but-believing laughter]
I wonder if the programmers coded on a 1620 with all the flags
removed.

Was their hardware the type that had negative zeroes?

Unclear of the details (but your story sounds plausible) of the
hardware, but the person's bank was *not* happy when they got the
$0.00 check back.

Personally, I thought the story would have been far funnier if it had
gone to collections. "But judge, I paid the nothing!" "They refuse
to acknowledge nothing."

I will have to commit a miracle to convince my mother to pay
ahead, though.

I think a payment from an account set up specifically for the
purpose would be good enough.

Not yet. Dad recently allowed automatic deposits to happen.
It is so much easier to herd cats.

Use that account for the gazintas and set up another for the
gazoutas.

--
Keith

 

[Ken Smith]

In article <e569b$45e79d2a$49ecf5e$12334@DIALUPUSA.NET>,
nonsense@unsettled.com <nonsense@unsettled.com> wrote:

Ken Smith wrote:

In article <5685e$45e760f9$4fe7431$8325@DIALUPUSA.NET>,
nonsense@unsettled.com <nonsense@unsettled.com> wrote:

Phil Carmody wrote:


kensmith@green.rahul.net (Ken Smith) writes:


ls -lu

I assume you had a point.

snip blather


So his point wasn't worth getting.

Every time you touch a file it is written to.

Touching a file is sufficient to introduce error.


The backup method I have been suggeting has no such problem. Making an
image of a drive does not risk changing its contents.

BTW: Since the time is not stored within the body of the file, the
sectors that contain the body of the file are not written. It is only the
directory information that is updated. You can have an error in that
sector.


So directory all errors are of no concern to you then.

No, I didn't say this. Remember that my suggested method of doing a
backup is to image the entire drive. The error that is the hardest to
spot is a file that now has different contents than before but not the
correct contents.

Changes to the directory information that matter are easily detected and
aren't cancerous like errors in databases can be.



--
--
kensmith@rahul.net forging knowledge

 

[Ken Smith]

In article <es928h$8ss_001@s1006.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>,
<jmfbahciv@aol.com> wrote:

In article <es829g$2hl$2@blue.rahul.net>,
kensmith@green.rahul.net (Ken Smith) wrote:
[...]
No, this is all silly. The backup I have been refering to is not cover in
the cases in your list. What I suggested was a complete image of the
drive.

That has the problem of also preserving the bad spots of the disk.
I'm assuming that you do want an image of the disk and not drive.

Preseving the bad spots is a feature not a problem. It is a record of
exactly how things were warts and all that you want to keep.

This would store the times as they were at the time archive was
made and not change anything about any of them

The only times that matter for backup are the time of creation and the
last modification. It doesn't matter when the last access happened.

You are in error. Last access is an important datum.

Please explain exactly how you thing the last access is important. What
do you do with this information? In this context, the only use of that
information will be a mistake.


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[Ken Smith]

In article <87tzx3ahj9.fsf@nonospaz.fatphil.org>,
Phil Carmody <thefatphil_demunged@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

jmfbahciv@aol.com writes:
You are in error. Last access is an important datum.

Not universally. I'd be tempted to say very very rarely,
except in a few forensic situations.

Are you familiar with the concept of reading filesystems
read-only? Are you suggesting that it's important that
no-one ever do so, lest they lose that important datum?

When a restore is done, the backup volume is mounted as read only. Back
in the days when tapes had a "wrong ring", the write ring was always
removed from the tape as soon as it was dismounted.

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[Ken Smith]

In article <b6eee$45e843a7$49ecfd0$19214@DIALUPUSA.NET>,
nonsense@unsettled.com <nonsense@unsettled.com> wrote:

Ken Smith wrote:
In article <e569b$45e79d2a$49ecf5e$12334@DIALUPUSA.NET>,
nonsense@unsettled.com <nonsense@unsettled.com> wrote:

Ken Smith wrote:


In article <5685e$45e760f9$4fe7431$8325@DIALUPUSA.NET>,
nonsense@unsettled.com <nonsense@unsettled.com> wrote:


Phil Carmody wrote:



kensmith@green.rahul.net (Ken Smith) writes:



ls -lu

I assume you had a point.

snip blather



So his point wasn't worth getting.

Every time you touch a file it is written to.

Touching a file is sufficient to introduce error.


The backup method I have been suggeting has no such problem. Making an
image of a drive does not risk changing its contents.

BTW: Since the time is not stored within the body of the file, the
sectors that contain the body of the file are not written. It is only the
directory information that is updated. You can have an error in that
sector.


So directory all errors are of no concern to you then.


No, I didn't say this. Remember that my suggested method of doing a
backup is to image the entire drive. The error that is the hardest to
spot is a file that now has different contents than before but not the
correct contents.

Changes to the directory information that matter are easily detected and
aren't cancerous like errors in databases can be.

The directory *is* a database. Scribble your pointer and have
fun finding your file. Even more fun if it points to the middle
of some other similar database file.

This is a lot easier to detect than a byte somewhere in the file being
wrong. The problem in doing a repair is usually more of a question of
finding the defects than correcting them.


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[Ken Smith]

In article <es9csr$8qk_001@s793.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>,
<jmfbahciv@aol.com> wrote:

In article <es848a$2hl$4@blue.rahul.net>,
kensmith@green.rahul.net (Ken Smith) wrote:
In article <es6mqn$8qk_001@s985.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>,
jmfbahciv@aol.com> wrote:
In article <es0bs3$joa$1@blue.rahul.net>,
kensmith@green.rahul.net (Ken Smith) wrote:
[....]
Where in the anual report? I can't find any such statement in there.

Intel is divided into divisions. Compare each division. The one
that has the controller product line does more business than the
one that has the PC product line.

I still can't find it. I searched the PDF version of the report for word
"division" and nothing like that came up. Do you have a page number?

You have to read the whole report and then compare the different
product areas.

I have read the damn thing. Now tell me where these number are.

[.....]

Now we can perhaps start to talk about repairing a system. Problems are
often like cancers. A problem with a file can cause a database to get
worse over time. If you back up to the one where the damage is limited,
you can then repair the file at fault and start working forwards. You
also have the option of going back to an even earlier version and starting
there.

Not for data bases such as SABRE. Airline reservation systems
don't care about data that is already in the past.

That is completely wrong. If I make a reservation right now:
..... time passes .....
and now I go to the airport, they'd better still remember that I made it.

So now what did you really mean.

It's too
complicated to go into detail.

Obviously the above isn't.

Now consider that a virus is
in the midst of your files you are going to restore.

Yes, I've considered it. The statements I've made have all been checked
and are still correct with this consideration.


[....]

For a Microsoft system, the only option that works is a bit by bit image
of the hard drive made by some non-Microsoft code.

Again, if you do a bit by bit type of backup, you also save the
bad spots of the disk.

Yes, exactly. When will you stop pretending that it is a new idea? This
is exactly what you want a back up to do. You don't want a back up
program to pretend it knows what is not important enough to save. You
want a complete record.

The OS refuses to let
you back up some of the important stuff. Since it is Windows and not
Linux, we know that the system was not in the state it should be for the
get go. The best you can do is put the mess back the way it was.

And what if the source of the problem is the way it was?

Then you have restored the system to the way it was. This is what
"restore" means. It is a different word from "repair" or "correct".

On a Windows system, you always want to keep your data on a different
drive than the OS. This make backing up the good stuff much easier.

How do you separate the data from the OS when windows has the
annoying habit of merging both?

Go read what I wrote. You can direct all well written Windows programs
about where to put their data. There are very few that won't let you. I
am not arguing that Windows is less than a dreadful OS. I am suggesting
how to make the best of a bad situation.

When a Microsoft system goes very bad the first thing to try is restoring
to the previous image. This doesn't mean that you have really fixed the
problem but it does let you see if the previous version would work at all.
You may have one of those rare cases where the hardware has failed.

Very often you are forced to reinstall a bunch of software and then copy
the data back in from the backup.

How are you going to choose which files to copy from the backup if
it's bit-by-bit save of the disk? You can't.

Now we are getting to the subject of repair. This is a more complex
subject than just making backups. This is why I suggested that the data
be on a different disk. This means you know most of what needs to be
copied right away. For programs you may be in for a lot of work. On the
Windows OS, the installed programs step all over each other. If you have
been a good person, you will still have the install disks and know which
order they got installed to make a running system.


[....]

What if it
is a problem that you can't control?

What do mean by that?

It can be many things. The OS has a bug; the network has a bug;
your apps created an environment that causes the glitch in cooperation
with timing, the phase of the moon, and other events.

You mean a bug, a bug, a bug and perhaps a hardware problem.

Assuming you mean some bit of software that simply
takes it in its head to mess things up from time to time, there are still
things that you can do. All such things are very ugly.

Some days, problems can happen with the position of a certain pattern
of bits in a particular location of memory.

Yes, this is what I said.

[....]

This doesn't increase complexity. It only increases speed.

How quickly can you stop a semi truck going at the speed of light
in a vacuum? Start your timing just notice a problem.

Now you are just being silly. You haven't been able to say how it is more
complex because it isn't it is the speed that has increased.

Most of the time we could hit the
panic button and physically shut down a runaway system.

That was always a near useless option.

You are telling me that this was useless? I still pull the plug
when I see somebody sniffing my bits over the net.

You think you see that. Now what is it that is really happening? You saw
a light blink on your modem, I assume.


[....]

I am talking about the application I referred to in another post.
It was called SABRE. It was probably the first computer aided
transaction processing system.

What was the date? There was one that I know of in 1972.

oh, jezusfuckinghchrist. Go back and read the posts.

Like I thought. You don't have 2.

We had thousands.

Like I thought you have none at all. The reason I asked you to name two
was because I thought I detected the usual blowing smoke trick where you
imply that you have already proven something at some earlier point in the
thread.


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[Ken Smith]

In article <es92nu$8ss_004@s1006.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>,
<jmfbahciv@aol.com> wrote:

In article <es84ft$5ks$1@blue.rahul.net>,
kensmith@green.rahul.net (Ken Smith) wrote:
In article <87y7mhb0fx.fsf@nonospaz.fatphil.org>,
Phil Carmody <thefatphil_demunged@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

[.... swapping ...]
Wrong. If it's not moved onto the swap medium, it's lost.
My kind of computing doesn't like losing data, yours might,
but as we know BAH computing is BAD computing.

This is almost exactly right. The write to the swap volume is only needed
if the page is dirty (ie: has been written to)

This is part of the "complex issues" skipped to keep the list short.

Do you think that a swapper moves pages from the RAM to the
swap file?

If you think otherwise, you don't know what you are talking about. This
is what "swapping" in a VM system implies.

/BAH

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[Ken Smith]

In article <es98ds$8qk_001@s1006.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>,
<jmfbahciv@aol.com> wrote:
[....]
The other stuff I've spoken to elsewhere.

The case that I brought up was database; with databases, the data
is always a moving target that can never be snap-shot with accuracy.

This is not always true. In a multidisk mirroring system, you can do a
commit and unmount one drive. It will be an image of what was there at
the time the commit happened. Disks are fast enough that this option can
be used for most applications. The delay caused by the OS's commit
operation is not very long.

[....]

Normal OS file rules prohibit file "co-edit" sessions.

Nope. It can be done but you really have to know what you're
doing. We implemented a system calls that would help different
programs "share" files.

Note his word "normal" in the above. You can have multiple streams of
data going to a file even on a Windows machine. All that is needed is to
have one task that does the actual write operations. This is usually
combined with "event based" recording where the transactions are recorded
with time stamps so that the correct order is insured.



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[Ken Smith]

In article <es95ji$8qk_001@s1006.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>,
<jmfbahciv@aol.com> wrote:

In article <es6rgr$kgg$6@blue.rahul.net>,
kensmith@green.rahul.net (Ken Smith) wrote:
In article <es6h92$8qk_001@s985.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>,
jmfbahciv@aol.com> wrote:
In article <es5i08$ujr$3@blue.rahul.net>,
kensmith@green.rahul.net (Ken Smith) wrote:
[....]
The "in a writable mode" makes this a very different statement.

Each time you copy, the file has been in a writable mode.

The output side must be writable but not the input side. This means that
there may be an error in the copy you make but you don't change the source
file.

Which file will be restored? Not the original. Our distribution
tapes had copies of the originals.

Restoring is the process of putting the machine back to the way it was on
a given day. This means that the version that was on the disk at the time
of the backup is the one that must be put back. To do anything else takes
us out of the area of doing a restore.

When the copy process does the verify, the error will almost
certainly be detected.

You also keep assuming that only hardware errors happen

No, I don't. I have suggested many cases where the software is at fault.

and that
all hardware errors are detected

Again, no I don't. You need to read more carefully.

and that those, which are
detected, will be reported.

....and a 3rd time.

Honey, you are not paranoid enough.

I have suggested the reasonable way to deal with the problems of doing a
back up. You are so determined to prove me wrong that you haven't even
read and thought about what I wrote. You just bark some new claim at the
thread and assume that it will convince people.

[....]

This is only a problem with this copy of the file and not with the one we
were backing up. You have also ignored the verify step which is always
done.

No, it is not. Verifying requires a second "save" to occur.
Even the old days a full system save couldn't be saved and verified
in one night. Nowadays you have disks that have capacities
in the giga-thingies.

The disks and computer have gotten faster more than they have gotten
bigger. Today it takes less time to image my 250G disk than it did the
10M Winchester that was the first one I imaged.

[.....]

None of this changes the fact that you mixed up back up, restore and
repair. The whole reason you do a back up is because files can be changed
when they shouldn't. This is not a question we have been arguing.

I have, almost consistently, been talking about files disappearing.
Plus all the things that can go wrong along the way.

Yes so we have always agreed that the reason you do a backup is because
the files can change at times when they shouldn't. Hopefully we can now
put this question away.

[.....]

As I pointed out, this is exactly what a restore would do. It puts the
files back as they were on some date in the past. If the files are not
right on that date, those incorrect files are exactly what you want a
backup to have on it. You have mixed up the question with one of repair.
That is a different topic.

If you are restoring the virus that is causing you to rebuild your
system, you will be rebuiling your computer system over and
over and all over again. You will never, ever, get out of
restore mode until you stop restoring the virus (a.k.a. the mess
maker).

No, I am not completely stupid, as you seem to want to imply. The restore
puts things back to the way they were. This means that if the system was
broken on a given day, that exact situation is recorded on the back up.
An earlier back up would have the system as it was on some day before
things went wrong. This is exactly what you want back ups to act like.
They are complete pictures of the system on a given day. The restore
process lets you put things back as they were. The repair process is how
you make the system correct.

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