[cobalt-users] I figured out how to get the data out of those otherwise useless .raq files !!

["Zoltan F." <zoltan@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

You made backups of your sites on the Cobalt Raq but when you try to restore
it just doesn't work. Here is a solution:

The .raq file has two sections. The first part is like a text file. Then
comes the binary data. That is actually a .tar.gz archive that contains all
the file from the server!! The text part has many useful information too
such as file ownerships and attributes, directory listings, etc. It also has
all user info of the virtual site, quotas, email aliases, vacation messages,
etc. To get to the actual files you need a binary file editor. I just
downloaded Cygnus Hex Editor ( http://www.aquatee.com/products/cygnus.htm ),
it's a shareware program and works well. First I made a copy of the .raq
file and give it a new file extension of .tar.gz. Then, by using the Cygnus
editor I get rid of the text part from the beginning of file. Now the new
file should start with the bytes of 1F 8B and have the extension of .tar.gz.
And it's ready to be opened with WinRAR ( http://www.rarsoft.com/ ). You can
extract your files to your harddrive and upload them back to the server
using FTP. I would not recommend ungzipping the file on the server, because
you may overwrite existing info, such as new emails or other user data, etc!
This is especially true if the site# is now not the same as when the backup
was made!!

Zoltan Frombach
zoltan@xxxxxxxxxxxx