[mythtv-users] MythTV backup

[jedi]

On Wed, Apr 02, 2008 at 03:54:25PM +0100, Steve Smith wrote:
> On 02/04/2008, David Segall <david at segall.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >  John Drescher wrote:
> >  > On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 9:57 AM, David Segall <david at segall.net> wrote:
> >  >> Yesterday I thought I might have lost all my MythTV data. Fortunately,
> >  >>  the fix was simple but it made me wonder how I could protect my set up
> >  >>  from catastrophic failure.
> >  >>
> >  >>  Operating a redundant fall back computer seems like overkill for this
> >  >>  application but I don't see any other solution to ensuring that MythTV
> >  >>  satisfies the SOAF [1] factor.
> >  >>
> >  >>  How do you ensure that your fried MythTV can be restored in time for the
> >  >>  nightly news and you have not lost the latest episode of the unmissable
> >  >>  series that screened last night when you were out?
> >  >>
> >  > I have the os disks on raid 5 (although I am eventually going to
> >  > remove that so I can spin down the disks to save power). And I have a
> >  > cron job that makes a backup of the mysql database each night to yet
> >  > another disk (not part of the raid). Every once and a while I email
> >  > myself that file to my 6.5GB gmail account.
> >
> > So what happens if your motherboard is fried by a power supply failure
> >  which was my fear yesterday? I thought that the disk drives would
> >  probably be OK but I knew that I could not find an exact replacement for
> >   the motherboard and I feared that I would need to do a complete
> >  reinstall of the OS. I was not confidant that a reinstall could preserve
> >  the existing data. I also needed to provide a TV set to watch tonight's
> >  TV programs.
> >  --
> >
> > David
> >
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> >
> David,
> 
> Linux is pretty tolerant of hardware changes (unlike certain other
> operating systems which refuse to even boot up, and then require
> "re-activation"). Perhaps if it's not too expensive you might keep a
> spare video card, as this appears to be on the most fiddle-prone areas

    I might even go so far as to say to have a complete spare machine.
I've setup my frontends with that in mind. For the two rooms I have
nearly identical machines. For the playroom it's not so critical but
it allows me to have a hot spare for the living room.

> of building a myth system.
> If the IDE/SATA interafcae of your new motherboard is not exotic it
> should boot straight up.

    Like anything, it's all a matter of how much you value the WAF.


    Something else to consider is that once my wife was hooked, it was 
much easier to get her to agree to buying the better hardware and having 
a duplicate. Once the first crappy cobbleware frontend killed itself, 
she was the one pushing for the mini.