Backup & Restore
Online snapshots of data in /home and /data are captured on a nightly basis, going back 7 days. Additional backups of /home and /data are captured once per week. These backups are retained weekly for 4 weeks and monthly for 6 months.
Faculty/Staff/Students can restore data themselves from the past week using the online snapshots (see below). If you require data restored beyond that timeframe, please contact bisonnet@bucknell.edu with the location of where the file was and from what date you’d like it restored.
Restoring from Snapshots
Every directory in /home and /data has a hidden directory called .snapshot. If you go into that (cd .snapshot), you’ll find a list of directories with various dates and times:
[student@bisonnet-hpc ~/.snapshot]$ ls -lu
total 252
drwx--x--x 112 student student 86016 Jan 25 00:00 daily.2025-01-24_0010
drwx--x--x 112 student student 86016 Jan 25 00:00 daily.2025-01-25_0010
drwx--x--x 112 student student 86016 Jan 26 00:00 daily.2025-01-26_0010
drwx--x--x 112 student student 86016 Jan 27 00:00 daily.2025-01-27_0010
drwx--x--x 112 student student 86016 Jan 28 00:00 daily.2025-01-28_0010
drwx--x--x 112 student student 86016 Jan 29 00:00 daily.2025-01-29_0010
drwx--x--x 112 student student 86016 Jan 30 00:00 daily.2025-01-30_0010
drwx--x--x 112 student student 86016 Jan 31 00:00 daily.2025-01-31_0010
If you then go into one of these directories, you’ll see your files as they existed at that particular date and time. Simply copy the file(s) you wish to recover into the appropriate place in your home directory, e.g.:
[student@bisonnet-hpc ~/.snapshot/daily.2025-01-30_0010]$ cp myfile ~/myfileThe above command would copy myfile from the 12:10am on Jan. 30, 2025 snapshot to the user’s home directory.
If you need a file or directory restored prior to the time available in the snapshots, please email bisonnet@bucknell.edu with the location of where the file was and from what date you’d like it restored.