Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with system and restore

Rebuilding Ubuntu Server 8.04 Help!!

purenitrous — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 11:40:27 -0800

I recently lost a raid array on a ubuntu 8.04 server forcing me to rebuild it from scratch and/or restore data from backup. (I have copies of /var, /etc, and /home) The problem is I can't seem to rebuild the server so that it works exactly the way it did before, this is killing me!! (fyi... I inherited this system). My specific problem seems to be with Samba. I'm looking for help in two different ways... help 1) either figure out how to restore this system with what I've got backed up. Or fix samba so it works. See details below: The previous system was Ubuntu 8.04. I've got good backups of /etc /var and /home.

What I want to do is simply build a basic install of ubuntu server 8.04 and restore /etc and /var. But this fails, because I am missing packages. I don't know what packages need to be installed to make this system complete. It seems like there should be something in my backup of /var/lib/apt should be able to tell me what packages are missing, need to installed, or reinstalled.

If I can't restore the server with the strategy above, I guess I need to rebuild the thing from scratch... which is what I've been doing and leads me to my next problem: Samba, LDAP, name resolution, and/or other unknown problems....

Samba user authenticate to openldap directory on another network. I've got nss working. I can do a #getent passwd and see ldap data. I've got my secrets.tdb setup and it seems like samba can query ldap. But I'm not sure all the naming services are working. In my /var/log/samba/log.smbd I see some errors "warning: failed to create BUILTIN\Administrators group! Can Winbind allocate gids?". (smb.conf log level = 5)

anyhow, I can post whatever log files or config files that might be helpful.

Another interesting clue to what might be wrong.... I have a win2k and wink3 server that both have shares with permissions for users from the domain that the failed Samba server was advertising. On the windows servers I've added the IP address of the WINS server on the network that the LDAP server is located... now the windows servers at least show user info in the permissions dialog box for the shares. But folks still can not authenticate to these windows shares... access is denied because of invalid credentials (or something).

Any ideas?

TIA,
Dave

After the restoration

Sara Anne — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 11:48:37 -0800

A couple of weeks ago I had to do a System Restore on my PC, after which I had to reinstall Microsoft Office (2007). Ever since, every time I I open an office program like word or Excel, the program has to go through a long configuration process. This is only true for Microsoft Office programs. I'd like to figure out a way to make this stop.

Is data recovery possible?

FireStyle — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 23:34:18 -0800

my brother had a corrupt system file that causes windows XP media center ed. to not boot up. while in the recovery console, he accidentally clicked an option to restore the computer to factory settings. Is it possible to recover the data he lost?

How can i restore my computer to factory standards?

TwilightKid — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 19:40:16 -0800

In a nutshell. I have a PC running Windows XP, personal edition. I want to restore the computer to factory standards (when i got it out of the box). No CD's or Discs came withthe computer. IS there a way to do this through XP? Its a HP 523n Desktop, and I have had the computer almost 3 years.... (more) The long of it is....At some point, I downloaded something bad which infested my computer with adware, spyware, and viruses. I went through Metafilter, reserached all the solutions; downloaded every single spyware and adware removal programs I could get my hands on, and cleaned my system as well as I can. I cleaned the registry. I went into safe mode, i did all sort of other suggestions as well......When running programs, they detect no viruses or spy/adware......

However, i still get uncontrollable pop ups....I use explorer, which I will switch over to Firefox when i get past this...

But, i cant live like this no more...If anyone has any ideas or solutions for me before i go ahead with the redotre, please let me know....

if not, if someone could guide me how to restore the system...I figured out how to restore it to an earlier date, but not all the way.

much thanks