CentOS 6 and Blu Ray burner

Issues related to hardware problems
etpoole60
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CentOS 6 and Blu Ray burner

Post by etpoole60 » 2019/02/09 06:25:24

I got a refurbished machine that ran Windows Server in the past. Prior to me getting the machine the disks were wiped clean of everything (I had to get software from Western Digital to information that had to be on track 0).
I installed CentOS 6 x86_64 and over time I burned many DVD ISO images. I downloaded both CentOS 6 and CentOS 7 Everything and bought some 25G blank disks and opened K3B and tried to burn these images. Needless to say it failed totally. So I wrote this in my 'Issues To Track Down' folder and went about my merry way...
It's now some time later and I've marked this machine to be my 'main' machine. I know I have to do fresh install of CentOS 7 and I want to install 389-Directory Server, Ansible for configuration control, Oracle 12cR2, latest Postgresql with ora2pg to get off of Oracle DB. ALso I want to move from multiple software RAID-1 devices to RAID-10 device - so that means moving all of the data off of this machine.

Now I finally come to my questions:
  • I do not have a method to backup the data on this machine so I thought I would write everything to this Blu Ray, but how?? I'm sure since I've upgraded to the latest 6.10 K3B must have been upgraded by now.
  • I'm sure that the native backup software will see this unit and allow me to produce good backup?? Correct?
  • I'd still like to burn my Everything ISO to this unit as opposed to a 32G flash drive.
  • Are we behind using Linux? Does CentOS 7 support this device?
TIA
Gene
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Gene Poole
Woodstock, Georgia

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TrevorH
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Re: CentOS 6 and Blu Ray burner

Post by TrevorH » 2019/02/09 12:21:41

Are we behind using Linux? Does CentOS 7 support this device?
Can't answer the rest of your questions but, CentOS 6 is still current but only just. It's now in what's known as production phase 3 where RH only fix security bugs marked as "Critical" or sometimes "Important". It has less than 2 years of its 10 year lifespan left. If y ou aim to use this beyond Nov 2020 then you will be better off starting over with CentOS 7.

Everything is newer in CentOS 7 than in 6.
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
Use the FAQ Luke

etpoole60
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Re: CentOS 6 and Blu Ray burner

Post by etpoole60 » 2019/02/10 19:18:35

That is why I want to get the Blu Ray working. In almost every tutorial or process it states you should have a reliable backup. Even with double-sided DVD (do they still make double-sided DVD??) it will take at least 165 just by looking at the size counts (using df -h and du -hc).

I think everyone is in this fix when you need to move from CentOS 6 to CentOS 7 by 11/2020 (if you are rich and have RHEL 6 IBM/Red Hat will still support you for a cost). The only way around this issue is if you have a SAN and keep every bit of information on the SAN. And you will still lose a lot of information (i.e. How many things that Oracle requires that is not in the Oracle directories???; There are many things that is in /etc/rc.d/init.d that you need )

I have a solution for my problems:
  • Machine A: This machine I am going to move to CentOS 7 has 2 - 120 GB SSD for the OS and swap using RAID-1; 2 - 4 TB WD Black drives for all my data; DBMS; and all other apps and such. THis machine also has 2 - 4 TB drives for spares that are not configured.
  • Machine B: Is about half the size of Machine A. I will take the 2 spares and install them here and copy all of the data from Machine A to Machine B.
  • Once the move from CentOS 6 to CentOS 7 on Machine A is complete I will copy all of the data back.
This would have been so much easier if I could burn Blu Ray and the backup would last 100 years
I'll not persue this any further.
TIA
Gene
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Gene Poole
Woodstock, Georgia

Whoever
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Re: CentOS 6 and Blu Ray burner

Post by Whoever » 2019/02/10 22:34:51

Why not use regular hard drives for backups?

etpoole60
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Re: CentOS 6 and Blu Ray burner

Post by etpoole60 » 2019/02/27 18:13:17

Thank You!
That's exactly what I did - only to another machine. And that solves the immediate problem.

However, going forward that leaves a pretty good size hole. I've a business and there is quite a bit of data starting to grow. I've got to keep this data for many years (banking information, tax information, customer information, etc.). Burning it to this optical media means it will last ??50 years?? maybe. But on a hard drive 5 years maybe? Even if my internal burner dies I can hook my TV Blu Ray player via eSATA to the computer. Also with it on a hard disk it could be hacked not so on a optical media on the shelf.

I've gone 2 years without having to purchase a Windows machine now I may have to just to burn a Blu Ray.

TIA
Gene
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Woodstock, Georgia

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TrevorH
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Re: CentOS 6 and Blu Ray burner

Post by TrevorH » 2019/02/27 20:24:00

I am not sure that the lifespan of optical media is as long as you hope it is. A quick google for "optical media lifespan" gave me many articles that seem to imply that it may be as short as 2-5 years for writeable bluray discs but I have no idea how reliable any of those are. I'm sure with more searching and attention to detail than I gave it you should be able to get some sort of feel for what's accurate.
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
Use the FAQ Luke

chemal
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Re: CentOS 6 and Blu Ray burner

Post by chemal » 2019/02/28 01:42:00

Schily's cdrtools do write blue ray discs. They are not included in CentOS (and most other distros) but there are external repos for CentOS, e.g.

https://negativo17.org/cdrtools

Once you have installed them, k3b should be able to write blue ray discs.

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Re: CentOS 6 and Blu Ray burner

Post by Whoever » 2019/02/28 06:20:42

etpoole60 wrote:
2019/02/27 18:13:17
However, going forward that leaves a pretty good size hole. I've a business and there is quite a bit of data starting to grow. I've got to keep this data for many years (banking information, tax information, customer information, etc.).
As Trevor stated, you cannot rely on burned optical media for long term storage.

You need to use either hard drives, with the "original" copy on line at all times and backups on other hard drives that are spun up and tested frequently. Always two copies, so that when one of the hard drives fails, you can re-create your backup or original data; or use tapes.

Whatever you do, don't rely on a single copy, ever.

chemal
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Re: CentOS 6 and Blu Ray burner

Post by chemal » 2019/02/28 16:40:56

Some companies offer "archive grade" blu ray discs: https://panasonic.net/cns/blu-ray_disc/archive.html

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TrevorH
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Re: CentOS 6 and Blu Ray burner

Post by TrevorH » 2019/02/28 17:15:01

In any case, I am not sure of the usefulness of setting this all up on CentOS 6 since that has less than 2 years left before it goes EOL. Support for newer hardware is almost certainly better in CentOS 7.
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
Use the FAQ Luke

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