On Tue, 26 Aug 2008 03:34:11 +0000, Mark Sims holrum@hotmail.com wrote:

It's a big old world out there and if you look hard enough, you can find
something to justify most any plan, regardless of how outrageous, if a single
occurance is acceptable justification.  Of course, by that standard we all
should walk around wearing Kevlar helmets.  After all, there has been a single
instance of someone being hit by a meteorite in recorded history.

If I'd lived and operated a data center in NO even before Katrina, I'd have
considered flooding to be a high percentage risk and done something
appropriate about it.  If I lived in the high desert, I'd not worry too much
about flooding.

The silliness in your "advice" is that you offered up one of the most extreme
"solutions" as generic advice and said that anything less was no backup at all
or something to that effect even though you don't know my or any other list
member's circumstances.  Let's see how your advice and its associate expense
fits my situation since I'm the one you replied to.

I'm retired so total loss of my data would have no financial impact.  A huge
sentimental and legacy impact, in terms of both my writings, designs and
digital photos.  Interestingly enough, all those types of data are backed up
multiple ways including on a set of DVDs resting in a friend's safe who lives
a few miles away.  My past design work is completely static, my photos mostly
static and my writings a little less static so updates to that collection need
be done only a couple of times a year.  They'd only be needed if my cabin and
its contents suddenly and completely disappeared somehow.

I live in a cabin on gentle sloping ground about 200 feet above the Tellico
river.  Short of The Great Flood 2.0, water on the ground cannot reach my
place.  Period.  That takes NO-style flooding off the table.  The basement of
my cabin sits on bedrock.  The combination of the gradual slope and the mere
skim of topsoil takes land slides off the table.

In my basement there is one of the largest gun safes made, one that I can
stand up in.  It is set through the concrete block wall, back into the soil
bank behind my cabin so that the door is flush with the wall.  In other words,
like a vault.  The safe itself weighs about 2 tons.  The bottom few inches are
filled with another ton of concrete and the foot of the safe is embedded in
about 3 yards of steel-reinforced concrete, some of the steel welded to the
safe's body.

The lockworks are US government crypto-certified.  I paid a bunch extra for
that quality of lockwork. The combination lock is a Sergent and Green
crypto-grade unit and the key lock is a Medico high security one.  Both locks
must be manipulated to open the safe.  Inside the safe is another smaller
"valuables" safe, also secured with a S&G crypto-grade combo lock.  It was
intended for jewelry but I use it for backup media storage.

Even sitting in the open it has the highest UL fire rating available.  Set
back in the dirt bank, it is impervious to fire.  The safe is both alarmed and
booby-trapped.

(certain immaterial-to-this-discussion have been changed for obvious reasons.)

I installed this safe years ago when I traveled a lot to protect my gun
collection.  It makes a damned fine data safe.  So let's evaluate the risks

Risk            Covered?
Fire            check
Earthquake      check
general flood    NA
local flood      check*
explosion        check
land slide      NA
B&E              check**
Tornado          check
Riot            check
Nuclear attack  check***
Nosey neighbors  check

• broken water pipe, etc.  The basement is drained by gravity plus my alarm
  system has a leak detection facility that kills power to my well pump.
  ** adding to my protection against breaking and entering are all my heavily
  armed and dangerous neighbors.  We put teeth in the term "Neighborhood Watch".
  *** of any nearby strategic target such as Oak Ridge.  Can't imagine anyone
  nuking Tellico Plains :-)  Even if they did, I'm still 25 miles and a mountain
  range away.

My lights-out server sits inside the safe with the power and ethernet cables
brought out through suitable secure penetrations.  I put the server in the
safe after the experience of a previous fire.  My backups were good but the
hassle, time and cost involved in setting up a new server made using available
space in the safe for this one a no-brainer.

Also sitting in the safe is another laptop just like this one.  I stay on the
trailing edge of technology so buying a second one cost me almost nothing.
This totally eliminates the risk of even an hour of down-time if I break this
laptop or it just quits.  I swap them occasionally to equalize the wear and
tear and to keep the capacitors in the power supply well-formed.

There is a small CO2 cylinder in the back of the safe equipped with a spring
loaded, solenoid tripped valve.  The valve came directly out of an Ansul
automatic fire protection system.  If triggered by an external thermal
rate-of-rise Fenwal switch, it provides a steady flow of inerting gas, good
for a couple of hours.

This setup is a lessons-learned from my house fire when steam and acidic smoke
got past the "air tight" gun safe seal and damaged thousands of dollars worth
of guns, even before the fire was completely out.  I had the safe open even
while the firemen were watering hot spots and my guns were already corroding.
Insurance paid OK but some of the guns were literally irreplaceable so I still
suffered great loss.

Ansul systems can't be reused so the valve setup is a throw-away item at most
any used restaurant supply company.  The CO2 bottle is an off-the-shelf 20 lb
soft drink dispenser cylinder.

So.  Given my setup, tell me what risk I'm exposed to that would make shipping
backup media a hundred miles away and paying someone to store them make
economic sense?  I think that I have a very well thought-out and complete data
security system but I'm always open to second opinions.

John

John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
I don't speak Stupid so do speak slowly.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Neon John" jgd@johngsbbq.com
To: "Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement"
time-nuts@febo.com
Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2008 1:10 PM
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] While we're discussing backups...

"tell me what risk I'm exposed to"
An angry wife !

On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 10:10 AM, Neon John jgd@johngsbbq.com wrote:

Heh. "Let the punishment fit the crime" ... and let the backup
strategy fit the risk model.

Might wanna keep an eye on the DVD's. I hear the dyes aren't quite as
stable and long-lived as the manufacturers claim. I've heard rumors of
discs being stored undisturbed in safety-deposit boxes for 5yrs
starting to break down. Some people I know with a rather small set of
backup DVDs read the existing discs and burn a new set every 6-12mo.
This serves the purposes of verifying that you can restore from your
backup and that your media is fresh.

Heard about how "high security" locks may not be as secure as the
manufacturers claim? hackaday.com and toool.nl... the lesson from that
is to keep reviewing your backup strategy. The chances that someone
will have the means, motive and opportunity to come after your safe is
probably pretty low. Low enough that you sleep well at night.

So yeah, I think we're very much in agreement: think about what you
have to lose balanced against how much it'll cost to protect against.
And don't rest on your laurels. :)

CK

--
GDB has a 'break' feature; why doesn't it have 'fix' too?

On Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:04:07 -0400, "phil" fortime@bellsouth.net wrote:

She and my (former) best friend ran away about 5 years ago.  Thankfully. :-)

John

--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. -Darwin

On Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:17:06 -0700, "Chris Kuethe" chris.kuethe@gmail.com
wrote:

This is one of those areas that sink my confidence in predictive modeling and
accelerated aging - if it could go any lower.

My collection of data CDs, mostly digitized vinyl music and cassette-based
audio books plus various specialized backup, number in the thousands, many
over 10 years old.  I've yet to have that first one refuse to read, at least
not any that didn't have physical damage.

A couple of years ago I started moving to DVD data storage. No problems there
either.  One rather extreme experience makes me think that all this stuff
about aging is bunk.

During my move in up here, one of my data DVDs escaped from custody.  It
rolled down the edge of my yard where it lay for over 6 months including
summer.  It was exposed, read side up, to direct sunlight for several hours a
day.  When I found it, the thing had turned a gorgeous deep royal purple with
a pinkish tint around the edges.  It was also mud-spattered and had suffered a
few scratches on the read side.

I figured that it was toast but just for grins I washed off the dirt, stuck it
in my cheap Chicom no-name drive and fired off file manager.  The disc read
perfectly.  I copied its contents to my laptop and burned a copy just in case
but the original read just fine.  It read fast too, with none of the grinding
and shaking that the drive does when it's having problems.

I suspect that when failures that don't involve damage occur, the cause will
turn out to be the plastic sleeves that many people use.  perhaps the
plasticizer in the sleeve plastic doing something nasty to the discs.

I don't use sleeves.  I stack 'em back on spindles just like they came from
the factory.  I've made a number of wooden spindles from dowel (one size fits
perfectly in the disc hole) and squares of wood glued together.  I don't know
if that matters or not but I figure that the factory must think that stacking
'em on spindles is OK so why not?

I violate another conventional wisdom.  I buy cheap media, usually whatever
Sam's Club has on sale.  I HAVE had disc/drive compatibility problems but that
was a conflict between a specific drive and a specific brand and probably lot
of discs.  One CD drive I had simply would not digest HP discs even though
they were supposed to be high quality.

Yeah, but I don't take much of that stuff seriously.  When I worked for TVA,
they'd pay for any schooling that could be even remotely related to the job. I
got 'em to pay for me to attend locksmithing night school.  I don't have the
practical experience of an active full-time locksmith but I HAVE done a lot of
hacking and practicing.  I can pick a conventional key lock in seconds and
open a cheap school locker-style combo lock in minutes.  I can open office
supply store combination-type fire proof safes in a reasonable amount of time
with just manipulation - much faster with an electronic stethoscope.

I can't make heads nor tails of this safe's lock.  The dial turns as if on
ball bearings (probably is).  There is no feel and no sound.  Most of the dial
is shielded so neither the Feynmann nor the Blaze methods can be used.  Plus
this lock uses 4 digits for the combination which expands the number space
hugely.

I DID seek the advice of a friend who is a career locksmith before selecting
my particular lock setup.  He knows his stuff.

I suspect that drilling would be the only method in.  Even then, a diamond
drill would have to be used to defeat the tungsten carbide plate in front of
the mechanism.  Someone drilling would have to know where my boobytraps are
located and only I have that info :-)

I put the claim that crypto-grade locks are insecure in the same category as I
do theoretical and special case crypto exploits.  The span between theory and
practice is large, too large for me to worry about.

John

John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
Okay, okay, I'll take it back ... UNfuck you!

----- Original Message -----
From: "Neon John" jgd@johngsbbq.com
To: "Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement"
time-nuts@febo.com
Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2008 7:55 PM
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] While we're discussing backups...

I used "angry wife" only to demonstrate that we often overlook something
that we take for granted.

Neon John wrote:

In general I agree with you but I have one case where discs became
trash. It must have been from a problem in the manufacture.

I bought a couple recorded video DVDs from a small vendor. I'm not sure
if they were burned, but I suspect they were. (As opposed to pressed -
or what ever the right term is for the high volume manufacture method.)

They were fine when I played them randomly over the first several
months. Then I lost interest and didn't try to play them again for at
least a year, maybe a couple years. When I finally tried again they were
useless. The inner shiny data surface had turned dull brown; more-so at
the edges, but all of the two disks were unreadable.

So I know of at least one case where (I assume) some problem in the
manufacturing process left these disks with a very short lifetime. These
were not backups, not critical and no big loss, but the moral, I guess,
is don't buy cheap no-name media for your backups. I believe there is an
archival grade for DVDs and CDs. It might be worth using if the data is
important to you and you expect to keep it on this media for a long
time. Checking the backups periodically for signs of degradation is not
a bad idea, unless the backups are only needed over a short period. This
monitoring has been mentioned before, but requires the same kind of
discipline needed as to make the backups in the first place.

On Tue, 26 Aug 2008 22:55:42 -0400, Mike Naruta AA8K aa8k@comcast.net wrote:

Probably so.  Actually I had a great marriage for 25 of the 27 years.  Then
menopause hit with a vengeance.  I sure am glad I'm an outie instead of an
innie.  I'd not wish that on anyone.  We split amicably and still chat
occasionally.

Either that or the combination setting mechanism has broken or come loose.  A
locksmith is probably your best bet unless you just want a project to play
with.  He'll probably have to drill the lock.  Drilling templates is one of
the things highly guarded by the high priests of the profession.  A good
'smith can install a new lock so that the hole is plugged suitably and all
signs of the drilling are hidden.

Of course, you DO need to make sure you're memory ADEV isn't too bad :-)  Bad
memory's the most common reason for locksmith calls for safe openings. You
might take a look at Matt Blaze's paper on safe cracking here:
http://www.crypto.com/papers/safelocks.pdf

His technique near the end of the paper should work well for you if you've
either slipped a few digits in your memory or a setting wheel has slipped a
little.

Nah.  My place is a private inholding smack in the middle of the Cherokee
National Forest.  Twenty five miles in any direction to any other
civilization. The ranger nazis write people tickets for washing their hands in
the river.  The worst chemical here is probably the bleach that some folks use
to chlorinate their water.  Basically heaven on earth!

That's just cause for what is known in the legal profession as "commendable
homicide"!  I had a now-deceased ham friend whose wife would do stuff like
that.  I always stood in drop-jaw amazement when I heard of her latest
escapade.  I can't imagine getting mad enough at my wife to actually tear up
her stuff.  Takes all types, I guess.

John

John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
There is much pleasure in useless knowledge. ?Bertrand Russell