University of California at Berkeley
           Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences
                     Instructional & Electronics Support Group

								Apr 27 2017

/share/b/pub/restores.help


CONTENTS

	Just lost a file?
	How to request a file restoration
	Description of the archiving process


Just lost a file?
-----------------

  UNIX: Recent copies of your files are available in UNIX sub-directories
  called .snapshot.   There is a .snapshot sub-directory in each of your 
  directories.  The .snapshot sub-directory does not appear in a general 
  "ls" command, but you can access it if you name it explicitly, ie

  % cd .snapshot
  % find ~/.snapshot -name file-I-am-looking-for.txt

  To create a tar file of a former version of a directory ('~' is your 
  entire home directory), for example (using a snapshot directory for 
  2017-04-26 at 10am): 

  % cd ~/.snapshot/daily.2017-04-26_0010/
  % tar cf /tmp/myhome-apr26.tar .

  Note that you can't write into the .snaphot diectory, so in that
  example we write the tar file to the /tmp directory.

  UNIX files may also be restored on a EECS Windows computer, where the 
  instructional UNIX home directory is mounted as drive M:.  Use the 
  Previous Versions tab in the Properties menu (right-click on the file
  or directory name).

  If the UNIX file was lost prior to the snapshot copies, you can request 
  a restore from tape (see below).

  WINDOWS: If the file was recently on your Windows U: drive, you can look 
  for it in the Previous Versions tab in the Properties menu (right-click 
  on the file or directory name).

How to request a file restoration
---------------------------------
  The EECS Instructional filesystems are archived to tape every night.
  These include the home directories of Instructional accounts, but not
  /home/tmp.  Note that archiving is not continuous; it occurs once a day 
  at about 1am, and it is just a snapshot of the files that existed at 
  that time. 

  You can the request a file restoration by email to "inst@eecs".
  We will need to know:
  
  	1) the name of the file and what directory it was in
  	2) when the file was created or last modified 
  
  If the file existed before 1am this morning, we probably have a copy.


Description of the archiving process
------------------------------------
  Here is how the archives are made on the Instructional systems:

  On our UNIX systems, hourly snapshots go back 12 hours and daily
  snapshots go back 7 days.  They're listed in the .snapshot directory.
  The directory will not always show up when you do an 'ls', but it's
  always there.  The archives are then moved to off-line disk storage
  and finally to tape.

  On our WINDOWS systems, there is a daily shadow copy at 6:10 am, and a 
  2nd one at Noon every weekday.  You get to it by going to the Properties 
  and click on the Previous Versions tab.  Only changes will appear.  If 
  you've made no changes, no previous version will exist.  
  
  Files older than 13 months old are deleted from the archives.
  

					EECS Instructional Support Group
  					384/386 Cory, 333 Soda
  					inst@eecs.berkeley.edu