[at-l] Final Meltdown Update

[Ryan Brooks]

- Well, the autopsy says that my UPS was responsible for killing all the 
computers.  No storm or power surge from the utility, just a dying UPS 
that somehow killed all my computers and a lot of disks.   This is sad, 
since I invested quite a bit in a decent 3000W rackmount UPS, and 
replaced batteries on it every couple years.

- All of my on-site backups were lost.   The backups were on firewire 
disks attached to the (now dead) mac in the next rack, but on the same 
UPS. 

- The RAID 5 array that had the mailing lists, friends sites, and 
gallery will no longer be with us, nor the controller.  We're running on 
two RAID 1 servers that my friend donated to the cause.

- No UPS.  Considering replacing this with a small solar setup, 
unfortunately my power requirements are rather high (800W)- if anyone is 
"in the solar biz" please contact me off-list,  it seems silly to use 
this much non-renewable power for something related to nature.

- I used the offsite backup to bring everything back that I could- which 
was from 12/05.   The only "lost  forever" data is the friends sites- so 
people will have to reupload that- and any gallery changes.

For the present:

- If you have gallery data that's now missing, you'll need to reupload 
if you so desire.

- Friends site owners need to contact me off-list to recreate their 
accounts and then upload.  I don't backup the friends stuff.

For the future:


- I'll buy a couple of firewire disks to have on an off-site server so 
the backups are fresher than 6 months.  I really feel bad about not 
having a more recent backup- it cost me days of work and we lost some 
excellent content - especially on gallery.


-Ryan