This blog post will be used to chronicle a process I’m using to rebuild Digital.Grinnell in Legacy Islandora using ISLE. This process was triggered by ITS’ intent to move DG’s FEDORA repository to a new server. That new server is currently mounted on node DGDockerX, my staging server, as /mnt/datastage and it contains a copy of DG’s production FEDORA repository made on or about June 15, 2020.

PORTABLE-DG

For starters I’m going be doing lots of “local” ISLE work up-front so I’m creating a USB drive backup/copy of /mnt/datastage. The USB drive is named PORTABLE-DG. In order to populate it I first attached the drive to my MacBook Pro (which is now woefully short on USB ‘A’ adapters) and started a series of rsync processes while that MacBook is connected to the campus network in Grinnell.

Note that I had hoped to control this process from the iMac (asset tag: 8660) that’s still in my Burling office, but it’s not behaving well for the last couple of weeks so that’s a no-go.

Using rsync

On my MacBook Pro with an SSH connection and terminal open to DGDockerX I started with this…

╭─mcfatem@MAC02FK0XXQ05Q ~
╰─$ cd /Volumes/PORTABLE-DG/FEDORA
╭─mcfatem@MAC02FK0XXQ05Q /Volumes/PORTABLE-DG/FEDORA
╰─$ rsync -aruvi islandora@dgdockerx.grinnell.edu:/mnt/datastage/datastreamStore . --progress

That operation completely tied up my MacBook Pro, so once I got control of my iMac again I moved PORTABLE-DG over there, opened a Screen Sharing connection to the iMac… and died a little (more) inside. While I can open the Screen Sharing connection again, presumably because both Macs are on campus Ethernet, the iMac won’t even recognize the USB drive. So, I might as well be back home where systems and peripherals all work… sometimes very slowly.

So I need two things from the same machine… a FAST connection to campus network storage, and a working large-capacity external drive. The only way I can get that now is via my MacBook Pro, sitting in my office with an Ethernet connection, and PORTABLE-DG plugged into it. Problem is I can’t use the MacBook Pro for ANYTHING else while this is running, and I can’t disconnect it for as long as the rsync operations take… and that could be a couple of days.

If I go home with the MacBook Pro it will mean pulling almost 1 TB of data from campus storage over my internet connection at home, and that could easily take a week.

And that’s a wrap. Until next time, stay safe and wash your hands! 😄