Down to the crunch

Today’s plan was to prove that my backups worked and we could do a full recovery from them. Originally I thought I would just wipe out what we had done so far and then reinstall using the backups but in the end I bowed to pressure (I encountered some questioning as to the level of risk) so I decided to do a full recovery to my little netbook instead.

I got to CMF early – loaded with two laptops, a backup drive, my notebooks and my camera. I had visions of portaging in Algonquin with the foodbarrel on my back. OK – so maybe I exaggerate a bit.

I spent the next hour proving that we could recover our system with a fresh install and our backups. It worked like a charm. Now I have to document the process thoroughly so Ruchi can replicate it. I’ve told her that I will have a manual for her by Monday and she will then have to do a full recovery on her own. She says she is up for it.

That’s when we ran into a little hitch. I asked her to connect to the system from her machine just to make sure that she had access to everything and that’s when we found that she couldn’t see the directories that we had set up. So I played around with some config settings and somehow corrupted the database. Again, the system recovery steps came into play and I was able to drop and recreate the database with our backup and we were back in business in no time. It seems that permissions hadn’t been properly set for the groups to access the directories and once that was fixed she was able to see the documents from her machine.

We decided we’d had enough of that for now so we went around to the various offices taking pictures of whoever was around and then headed for Trendy Cafe for lunch. We ate chicken momo C’s (I may have the order of that wrong) and they were delicious. They are basically dumplings with a spiced chicken filling and a tomato jelly-like sauce. They were wonderful and I would definitely have them again.

I went back to CECI for the rest of the afternoon and worked on filling out the end-of-assignment documents that CECI wants filled in. Basically they are used as an assessment of the overall project – based on the satisfaction of the participants and partners. I did try to work on the manual for Ruchi but I used the form-filling as a procrastination method, I’m afraid.

Raja (from Guelph) had sent a parcel with me to deliver to his brother in Hetaura and because I am finding myself running out of time, I had called his brother to arrange an alternate method of getting the parcel to him. Today his brother-in-law who works at the Nepali Broadcasting Station arrived to pick up the parcel. He seemed very nice and happily took the parcels from me to take to Ram (Raja’s brother).

Next on the agenda was another shopping spree with Bernie and Anne. Anne took us to a number of Fair Trade stores that CECI deals with and Bernie and I picked up a few items to take home.

Supper tonight was at Bernie’s – an amazing lasagna cooked by his Dede (literally ‘Big Sister’) who cleans his house once a week and cooks him a delicious meal. Bernie had picked up a bottle of wine on the way back and we dined quite well.

Must get that manual finished this weekend but I would like to work in one more site-seeing trip to something nearby.