Re: Lost my gramps data base ... help!

Hi John,

On 08/02/2022, John Sibert <[email protected]> wrote:
> Thanks to the gramps-users who replied to my recent plea for help.
> Ultimately, I was able to retrieve a .gramps backup file from one of the
> several backups that I had squirreled away on my NAS. So, everything
> seems to be more or less intact. I'm considering this episode to be a
> learning experience, and I thought I would share some of what I learned.

It's always worth sharing the hard lessons. Good to hear that you
recovered something of worth.

> I have one computer, a laptop that runs linux. As its sole user, I had
> administrator (super user) privileges, and never bothered to create a
> specific administrator account. That was my first bungle. My second
> bungle was to fool around with a second account, change the the new
> account UID to my own (administrator) UID. Then I deleted the new
> account, and since it had my own UID, my account was deleted. Thus there
> was no user on the computer that could fix anything requiring
> administrator access. So now that I have a new OS, the computer has 2
> users with administrator privileges. *TIL: have a second administrator
> account.*

Took a while to work this out but going back in this thread I see that
you use Mint, and a search on that reveals that it has a disabled root
account. All under the guise of security *Scoff*.

What you have is a disabled root user, and sudo for your administrator
account. Mint (and Ubuntu) have just refined it so the user doesn't
need to get involved with setting it up (until they get curious and
experiment :-)

You should be able to re-enable the root user while you have your
admin account, and a quick search indicates a method to do that for
Mint


However the important take away from your description is that you felt
that without a user to login with then, all was lost. I'd be very
surprised if that was the case as unless the drive was encrypted there
are a few ways of gaining access to it.

If you can boot the computer from an external device (USB?) then you
can use a rescue disk (there are, or were lots of them) to access the
drive in situ. Once that's done you have root again and can do what
you like.

If you can't boot into it, you can take the drive out and take it to
another Linux system and mount it there. Same thing applies, once it's
mounted then as root you can do what you like.

If the drive is fragged, there are ways of recovering the raw data
without spending a fortune (admittedly with varying degrees of success
- how long is a piece of string, how fragged is the drive?)

Besides improving your backup method (and we can all do that!), also
create that rescue disk and tuck it away somewhere safe. Sometimes the
system can't boot itself up, but your data is probably still all
there. A rescue disk is essential (often the original install media
has an option to do just that, ie: it has its own rescue disk)

Also worth doing (and being a laptop, then it may not be possible)
mount a 2nd drive in place of your home directory. It's very easy to
do and is invaluable when you decide to upgrade. You install the new
Operating System onto your main boot drive, and then later remount
your other drive (old home) over /home.  Access to this new home drive
will be seamless once that's setup correctly. ie:- you don't overwrite
it as you do when it's all on a single drive.

Now, I offer the above information in the same vein that you have
offered yours. To inform.
I don't know more than you, but I've recovered quite a few of them.
(Also guilty of breaking them!)

So call it the voice of hard lessons, or "I wish someone had told me
of the possibilities that first time!"

It's not that people don't know this stuff either but the impression
is left that you're out of possibilities if it occurs. Also Ubuntu,
Mint and the like tend to make this knowledge almost archaic, it's
not. It still works.
With Linux, you shouldn't need to 'throw in the towel' quite so early.

The above is obviously not complete, just be aware there really is a
lot hiding behind the curtain that these distributions put up (under
the guise of user friendliness.)

> I have cron scripts that run daily to backup my home directory to (1) a
> NAS located in another room in our house and (2) to an remote service
> located far away. These steps ensure that if my computer is lost or its
> storage damaged, or if my house burns down, I will be able to retrieve
> at least some of my files. What could go wrong? First thing wrong: I
> modified my backup scripts so that when I needed them, the backed up
> files were not in the directories where I expected to find them.
> Instead, they were in a different directory. *TIL: verify that your
> backups script is putting things where you expect them. *Second thing
> wrong: I did not fully understand how gramps makes backups. In fact, i
> still have questions about how gramps makes backups. *TIL: Reread the
> documentation again.

Yes, we can *all*  improve on our backup strategy, I must revisit mine
as it's been a while and things do change, when you least expect it.

As was mentioned in another group today "if you haven't done a
restore, you haven't done a backup". Which sounds very similar to
Brians adage. So that's 3 votes for "doing it, and testing it"
Because without that testing, it's an empty vessel.

> *Now, to get back to my family history.

That'll keep you busy. But do that rescue disk first. :-)


-- 
Cheers
 Glenn

rorpi - read only raspberry pi & various weewx addons
https://github.com/glennmckechnie


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