World: r3wp

I do think this is a golden opportunity area, care-free backups, 
and I have some solutions in the works

Is altME/Pro coming ?

We're now on REBOL3 world.....Two crashes of REBOL.net, each need 
to create a new world and abandon the old one.
Not a great advert for the x-internet.
 What needs to happen to ensure we never need a REBOL4 world?

The solar system has even 9 planets :)

But I can live all my lfe on just one.

Shouldn't need rocket science just to recover from a cashed server 
:-)

::-)

Rebol2 was created cause Carl take the oportunity to flush all messages 
and start with an "empty" word. He changed the name just to allow 
us using old "Rebol" world off-line for old message.

Rebol3 is another case as there was a filesystem crash so the altme 
Rebol2 files were broken/lost !

If you have a FS crash, Exchange will go down too !!

there's only one solution, distributing the data. once your data 
is on a dozen nodes, the probability of ALL of them breaking up becomes 
quite small. :)

Altme's data was/is distributed.
But there's no mechanism for rebuilding from that
So more scattered than distributed.

DideC has the right idea with the Rebol# Worlds.  There was nothing 
stopping us from using the old worlds.  I have seen a couple of times 
now how nice AltME's system is in restoring a user's system that 
has crashed, simple reinstall AltMe and all data is resent - trouble 
for a big world or a dial-up modem.

If AltME allowed you to choose a date to start the restore from, 
and allow the search feature to retrieve previously unretrieved messages 
- it would be a very nice system.

You mean if Carl had reinstalled a 6-week old backup of  the master 
REBOL2 world, it could have recync'ed itself  by finding later messages 
from the rest of us?

(I'm guessing six weeks since the last viable backup, as that was 
the date for one of the IOS restores).

Yeah, xactly what I meant  ;)

That would be excellent!!  Wonder why Carl couldn't do it?

and if someone had altered their local copy?

would those changes sync back up again?

Brock, that would not work.

Sunanda: it's not distributed, because data can only go from the 
server to the clients. as soon as the server is dead, everything 
is dead.

distributed means that all nodes are equal. and with the right measures, 
a few nodes failing are not enough to cause a data loss.

I think the reason that Carl created Rebol2 & Rebol3 is that if he 
had restored the original Rebol & Rebol2 all private messages would 
have been lost.


It would seem that AltME' s replication strategy isn't quite there 
yet.

Gabriele -- I think I have a more relaxed definition of distributed.

it should have been possible to recreate all the public stuff (as 
Brock says) by reclaiming more recent messags from some of the more 
trsuted clients.

Private messages would be a little harder -- but stil not impossible 
with the right recovery code.

**ALL** the data still existed somewhere. Altme failed to re-collect 
it.

The present set up seems totally fragile.  Dependant on a single, 
central server. That's so 20th Century :-)

its a bussines model

Another answer is use Raid Drives, and back up once in a while (daily).

how do I make a new group again ?

two peeps on top left

That's one layer of security Reichart.

But (given that failed for whatever reason -- human laziness in doing 
backups;  tsunami; all kit stolen in break-in; whatever), what's 
the *next* layer?

Secure systems need more than one layer -- as we've discovered with 
REBOL-->REBOL2-->REBOL3.

*All* the data still existed, distributed amond the many users. But 
we threw it away and started a new world.

It's not a a good case study to write up for prospective Altme users.

thanks Graham

I agree, Sunanda. I'm backing up my data now. :)

(my machine will probably crash now)

no, once you back up, it doesn't crash anymore

that's *once* you back up... just started... :)

Reichart: see my comment at top of this group regarding a separate 
AltME usability issue.

yeah anton, i lost a lot of important emails by doing a backup without 
checking the files first...

that is, they worked the day before, so i just backed up, then started 
the mailer and figured the files were broken

And *test* your backups! Did a medium-size system for a big bank. 
Ran great for 3+ years, they changed the network, glitched something, 
went to the backup and found that the archive software was set to 
remove all blank space (e.g. nulls) from files. Every backup for 
3 years had "compressed" the DB files in a way that made them useless.

interesting things that banks do.. would have thought that they have 
in place process to test and make sure recovery is possible

banks are also supposed to do money legitimately, but USA proved 
that doesn't work that well, us citizens had to bail out the Savings 
and Loan industry some years back after their illegitimate handling 
of money.

but that being said, you guys are helping me sort out how to finish 
my scripts...:-)

I totally agree that AltME could be built in such a way that the 
peers can suppliment the data back, you might as an example simply 
check the integrity of everyone's copy, and accept data when three 
or more people agree on the data.

Private data would be agreed on by the two parties

for example.

I can't change my sex when I right click on  myself...

this is a problem?

there can only be one AntQueen

I was going to change species but there wasn't an option.

Are you saying that Altme gender discriminates?

I can't change my sex when I right click on  myself...

I think you have to click really really hard to change your sex.

The reason I started playing with my sex was that I wanted to change 
my icon color, then one thing led to another...hmmn now I know what 
AltME should do...show the colors of the people applied to the names 
in the Users list...suspect that has already been suggested.