San Diego State University

ROHAN Academic Computing

File Restores on Rohan

Rohan share an Overland Data LibraryPro robotic tape backup system. The tape system allows a user to recover files themselves!  Backups are run once a day, starting at 1:30AM. Backups normally finish by 3AM.  A deleted file can only be restored if it existed before 1:30 AM.

The recover command will allow selection of file(s) to be recovered in the current directory.  The most recent version of the file(s) will be recovered. Multiple files, directories, and wildcards may be used to select files (example:  *.c readme Makefile)   When a directory is recovered, the directory and all files within are recursively restored.  A restore will normally finish in under 10 minutes.

If a backup or recovery session is in progress, your recovery will be delayed until the session is completed.  Tape system sessions can be monitored by nsrwatch (q will exit nsrwatch.)  Confirm there are no sessions in progress with nsrwatch before running recover.

Recovering a file deleted today,  myfilename.c:

rohan ~> recover
recover: Using moria as server
recover: Current working directory is /home/un/joeuser/
recover> ls -l myfilename.c
    -rw-r--r--   66257 Sep 13 02:00 myfilename.c
recover> add myfilename.c
    1 file(s) marked for recovery
recover> recover
    Recovering 1 file into its original location
    Volumes needed (all on-line):
           AGC001 at jb1
    Requesting 1 file(s), this may take a while...
    Total estimated disk space needed for recover is 66 KB.

    Received 1 file(s) from NSR server `moria'
    Recover completion time: Thu Sep 13 12:22:06 2001
recover> quit

The ls command displays files that existed in your account yesterday.  If the file that needs recovering was removed before yesterday, ls will not find that file.  Reset recover for an earlier time to display the filesystem as it then existed.  The changetime command is used to reset when to display the  filesystem, as in changetime last week or as in changetime Sep 6

Recovering a file deleted a week ago,   myfilename.c:

rohan ~> recover
recover: Using moria as server
recover: Current working directory is /home/un/joeuser/
recover> ls -l myfilename.c
    recover: myfilename.c: not found
recover> changetime last week
    time changed to Thu Sep  6 23:59:59 2001
recover> ls -l myfilename.c
    -rw-r--r--    2345 Sep  6 02:00 myfilename.c
recover> add myfilename.c
    1 file(s) marked for recovery
recover> recover
    Recovering 1 file into its original location
    Volumes needed (all on-line):
           AGC001 at jb1
    Requesting 1 file(s), this may take a while...
    Total estimated disk space needed for recover is 3 KB.

    Received 1 file(s) from NSR server `moria'
    Recover completion time: Thu Sep 13 12:32:15 2001
recover> quit

Notes:

  • Display prior versions of file(s) by "versions", ex: versions myfilename.c
  • Select a prior version by "changetime date", ex: changetime Sep 11
  • Type quit to exit from recover or nsrwatch
  • When using recover, type help for help
  • For more information on recover, see man recover