Amstrad repository.

||C|-|E|| · 14:50, 17 February 16

Hi guys!

I was reading these days about the dangers of having all the material of a particular web, or portal, in the hands of a single person because if something happens to the page the community would lose the stuff forever. However, I also understand that not everybody wants a mirror of his or her stuff publicly available everywhere. Thinking about this, I came across the idea of creating a repository that has all the Amstrad stuff inside but is not available to the general public. Something like a huge backup that would allow to bring back files if something catastrophic happens with a web or portal. Do you think that this would be a good idea? I actually could have the structure to do something like this if the community is interested and we are not talking about a huge number of Teras of data

. I do not know if it would be possible to store the huge amount of videos that populate Youtube, but definitely scans, games, programs, and everything that has historic meaning for us. Do you think that everything would fit in, let´s say, 6TB?

Munchausen · 15:17, 17 February 16

A big thing to consider is the wiki itself - such a vast amount of knowledge on here. I know Gryzor has backups. I think it should also be starting to get mirrored on archive.org. But another mirror is always good. The haiku OS community lost a lot of the old BeOS software quite recently because the guy who ran bebits and haikuware got in a huff about some decisions of the haiku project and took it down (actually he more-or-less held the project to ransom for it if they didn't remove the new package management from haiku). So much software, lost forever, very sad.

(Not that I'm suggesting Gryzor would do anything like that! But backups don't hurt)

reidrac · 15:30, 17 February 16

Very good point.

I thought about this several times, specially because of my experience with other sites like WOS changing hands; and even I thought about starting a project myself. But to be honest, why would I do things better? Private initiatives are likely to face the same risks and challenges.

That's why I'm getting more and more convinced that putting resources into archive.org, or a similar non profit like them, would be the best solution.

They already have archives for magazines (eg, Micromania Segunda Epoca (Spanish) : Free Texts : Download & Streaming :) and other old systems (eg, The Software Library: Atari Computer : Free Software : Download & Streaming :); perhaps we could contact Jason Scott or any other archivist and see how to start a chapter for the CPC.

ukmarkh · 15:33, 17 February 16

No disrespect to anyone, but we need to make sure this shizzle is backed up. 6TB disk is probably more than enough, but you'd need to then have RAID 1, 5 or 10 set up in hardware, in case of a disk failure. Then you'd probably need to back it off to DLT or LTO tape to make sure data is constantly being de-duplicated and off site in case of a fire or burglary.

||C|-|E|| · 15:58, 17 February 16

Quote from: ukmarkh on 15:33, 17 February 16
No disrespect to anyone, but we need to make sure this shizzle is backed up. 6TB disk is probably more than enough, but you'd need to then have RAID 1, 5 or 10 set up in hardware, in case of a disk failure. Then you'd probably need to back it off to DLT or LTO tape to make sure data is constantly being de-duplicated and off site in case of a fire or burglary.

It all depends on the size. Here, for example, I have an automatic mirroring system that copies all the data to the datacenter of this building and to another datacenter that is miles away every night. We also keep three more copies of everything around the lab. This is possible for some hundreds of GB, but not for 50 TB

. A few TB is probably as much as I can handle and, of course, it would be really really great to have mirrors of this somewhere else.

remax · 18:56, 17 February 16

Every action towards preservation has my vote

Dr Tiger Ninestein · 19:09, 17 February 16

This thread reminds me of cpczone

villain · 20:01, 17 February 16

And me of PnP...

MacDeath · 21:35, 17 February 16

QuoteEvery action towards preservation has my vote

jokes appart : yeay, it is very important to have some backups in different places.

what is the size of the CPCwiki and its forum ?

SRS · 21:37, 17 February 16

maybe a distributed private cloud as one backup, spread over all of our pc's ?

like "https://www.getsync.com/"; or so - I use big datacenters at work for backup so I have not much knowledge about distributed backup.

chinnyhill10 · 21:56, 17 February 16

Quote from: Dr Tiger Ninestein on 19:09, 17 February 16
This thread reminds me of cpczone

World Of Spectrum still isn't working properly all this time on from the ownership change. A perfect example of a community relying on one resource and one person and when they quit everything going wrong.

ukmarkh · 22:50, 17 February 16

It's crying shame what has happened to WOS.

andycadley · 22:57, 17 February 16

Quote from: ukmarkh on 22:50, 17 February 16
It's crying shame what has happened to WOS.

Not entirely the same thing though, there was already a hand over in process long before the server crash. The issues with it have all mostly been a desire by the new team to do a complete rewrite behind the scenes. It's not the way I'd have gone about things, personally, but there you go. It's certainly a shadow of it's former self though.

I'd still take that over what happened with CPCZone, or even things like Push'N'Pop where some genuinely useful information was undoubtedly lost.

ukmarkh · 23:11, 17 February 16

I don't want to talk about CPC Zone... Too Sad!

chinnyhill10 · 15:58, 19 February 16

Quote from: ukmarkh on 22:50, 17 February 16
It's crying shame what has happened to WOS.

It's down again and word on the street is that it is so broken and the workload so great it's doubtful it will ever be fully working again. Apparently a different team are working on a new Speccy resource using the same Infoseek database.

1024MAK · 18:48, 19 February 16

The current WoS site (well before today) is/was a temporary set-up using the data from the old server, but running on a new server. Because of the way that the original site grew by using custom code to glue various sub-systems together, and the lack of up-to-date versions of the software concerned, the team decided to start a new site from scratch.

As this is taking a while to sort out, if you use the current site, it does look like nothing much is happening.

But apparently all the data is backed up.

Yes, there is a big risk with WoS, as due to it's history (set-up and operated by one person) who did not allow mirrors, should the current team suffer a big real life problem. It's very possible that WoS will die.

And I agree with the comments made above about ensuring that there are multiple back-ups and copies of everything (well maybe not all the videos) relating to the CPCs.

It would also be a good idea if there are at least two caretakers just in case the owner/operator of the this site suffers from a big real life problem.

Mark

Shaun M. Neary · 18:49, 19 February 16

Quote from: ukmarkh on 23:11, 17 February 16
I don't want to talk about CPC Zone... Too Sad!

What happened that place in the end anyway? I was on hiatus for a couple of years, came back and the place vanished!

PulkoMandy · 18:54, 19 February 16

ftp://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/amstrad/ is as close as it gets to this. But I'm not sure if it's still being updated (maybe Paris 6 univeristy just forgot they have an FTP server running).

Anyway, a single place archive isn't very safe, so the only way that really works is having several copies in different places and owned by different people. And never trust one single website, be it something big like cpcwiki/pushnpop, wih your data.

ukmarkh · 19:05, 19 February 16

It's times like this, we really have to appreciate this site and forum. A big shout out to Gryzor and all who make it a wonderful resource.

||C|-|E|| · 19:17, 19 February 16

Quote from: PulkoMandy on 18:54, 19 February 16
ftp://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/amstrad/ is as close as it gets to this. But I'm not sure if it's still being updated (maybe Paris 6 univeristy just forgot they have an FTP server running).

Anyway, a single place archive isn't very safe, so the only way that really works is having several copies in different places and owned by different people. And never trust one single website, be it something big like cpcwiki/pushnpop, wih your data.

What I am going to do, at least, is to download everything from there and make sure that it is safe

chinnyhill10 · 19:21, 19 February 16

Quote from: 1024MAK on 18:48, 19 February 16

It would also be a good idea if there are at least two caretakers just in case the owner/operator of the this site suffers from a big real life problem.

Mark

WOS now has a mirror and this place should probably have one as well with backups that can be reverted back to.

Who runs NVG these days? Could or would NVG be able to run a mirror?

||C|-|E|| · 19:37, 19 February 16

In the meantime, I made 3 copies and I put one in the network drive, the one that has multiple mirrors around London. It is, of course, not available to the general public but at least we know that it will not be lost

. To be honest, is less that 500 MB, each one of us could keep a copy at home. This would probably be the best possible backup.

arnoldemu · 19:55, 19 February 16

Quote from: chinnyhill10 on 19:21, 19 February 16

WOS now has a mirror and this place should probably have one as well with backups that can be reverted back to.

I believe cpcwiki is backed up every day.
I have seen posts that indicate this.

SRS · 21:50, 19 February 16

Quote from: ||C|-|E|| on 19:37, 19 February 16
In the meantime, I made 3 copies and I put one in the network drive, the one that has multiple mirrors around London. It is, of course, not available to the general public but at least we know that it will not be lost . To be honest, is less that 500 MB, each one of us could keep a copy at home. This would probably be the best possible backup.

Good Idea. I have started downlaoding ftp://ftp.nvg.unit.no/pub/cpc/ (without NC100 and PCW) now.

-> 700MB downloaded.

||C|-|E|| · 00:25, 20 February 16

I have downloaded it as well

. At least, the contents of those two places should be safe now

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Amstrad repository.