Re: [BackupPC-users] System disk damaged

[Michael S. <ms...@ch...>]

> My server crashed due to hard disk errors. While the disk is still
> partially readable when mounted in a docking station, it is no longer
> usable. The problem is when I try and reinstall Ubuntu Server 12.04 onto a
> new disk and then restore backups of data and some configuration files via
> BackupPC I have discovered that the numeric ownerships no longer match
> thus generating access issues galore.This problem may be due to the fact
> that the server was initially 8.04, then upgraded to 10.4 and finally
> 12.4; the new server was a fresh install with users and groups being
> created in a different order and metapackages being installed in a
> different order, thus generating different numeric IDs.While I don't have
> a complete backup of the system disk, I do have /etc and /home on the
> backup and access to much of the old system when the bad disk is mounted
> in a docking station.Any suggestions for how to get the server up and
> running quickly and recover files properly?TIA,Dave

It depends how strongly you feel about the access issues and how much
effort you want to take.

On one end of the spectrum, there's the pedantically thorough method,
wherein you first examine your backed up /etc/password and /etc/group
files and put together a map of old to new user and group ids, restore
them to a temporary space, update all of the files, then copy them over.

On the other end of the spectrum, there's "chmod -R ugo+rwx *" and just
tightening up the few things that whine about permissions not being tight
enough.

Of course, depending on the thoroughness of your backups, if you recover
/etc/password, /etc/shadow, and /etc/group ... the old user and group ids
would be back, anyway...  And it's probably worth pointing out that if you
do this FIRST, the users would already be there with the old user ids and
group ids and restoration would be fairly simple.  You might want to just
do that.