Re: [cobalt-users] [qube3] big big problem :(( libc.so.6

[Malcolm McLeary <mmcleary@xxxxxxx>]

Hi Andreas,

on 4/5/03 10:31 AM, Andreas Cahen wrote:

> Thanks for the advices.. I already did the restore yesterday. I have
> lost most of my data but fortunately I did make a last dump of my
> databases. I had no other recent backups at hand. It wasn't really
> tragic, the qube3 is just my development system.

I didn't read any email over the last couple of days as I was dealing with a
MacOS X Server which suddenly refused to let any of the 60 client machines
authenticate and access their data.

In this case we had backups of all the data, but not the system
configuration (i.e. we can rebuild it, its the data which is "critical").
It would have been so easy to do a restore of the system config to get it
back to before the problem developed and then restore the data, but we
didn't have a "system" backup.  Further we didn't know what the mode of
failure was so doing a system restore was likely to set up the system for
another failure in the future (i.e. a latent problem).

All the accounts were intact and all the data was there as well but
MacManager appeared to be completely misconfigured with respect to home
directories and clients could not authenticate.  The biggest problem was
trying to understand what had happened and how best to fix it.

Although nothing had changed on the client machines before the failure it
was found that after importing users into MacManager it would only
authenticate users on machines which were running the latest client
software.  Hence we needed to update all 60 client machines to fix
authentication.

Although it was previously working, the new/stable configuration wouldn't
access the original home directories so it was necessary to relocate user
documents and preferences.

All in all it wasn't a tragedy, down time was limited to one day (although
it took two days to get it all back in shape).

It was truly bizarre ... the system was stable and nothing had been updated.
The local IT Manager had run a routine to verify Users and Workgroups in
MacManager and that¹s when it all went crazy.  Under the "new" config we
have exercised this same process a number of times with no ill effects.

Cheers,  Malcolm