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Air Force Has Lost 100,000 Inspector General Records (thehill.com)
schwit1 shares an article from The Hill: The Air Force announced on Friday that it has lost thousands of records belonging to the service's inspector general due to a database crash. "We estimate we've lost information for 100,000 cases dating back to 2004," Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek told The Hill in an email. "The database crashed and there is no data..." The database, called the Automated Case Tracking System (ACTS), holds all records related to IG complaints, investigations, appeals and Freedom of Information Act requests.... "We also use ACTS to track congressional/constituent inquiries."
The Air Force said they were "aggressively" trying to recover the data, adding that they had no evidence of malicious intent.
The Air Force said they were "aggressively" trying to recover the data, adding that they had no evidence of malicious intent.
You... do... have a backup, ... right?
E
I wonder where they'll store the request?
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Yep. Something was in those records someone wanted disappeared. This is SOP in government now; systematically destroying disk drives, deleting PST file content, wiping servers.... just another cover-up.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
That database had it coming.
Never attribute to happenstance which can be attributed to a cover up.
Let's see, it's a US Capitol Hill newspaper, and the article shows US airmen and a US transport in the photo. So, obviously, it's about the Kenyan Air Force.
James Hacker: Was 1967 a particularly bad winter?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: No, a marvellous winter. We lost no end of embarrassing files.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Slam the HDDs with a big hammer until data confesses...
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
What is aggresive recovery? Waterboarding the hard disks or straight to rubber hoses?
Let's mention the first 3 laws of computing:
1 - Backup
2 - BACKUP
3 - See Rules 1 & 2
On top of that, when I was in the USAF working in the missile shop, we had FIVE copies of all the records, and they were stored in different places. Losing the records to a missile would mean your ASS! More than one would crucify the entire shop!
And now someone is trying to complain that the Inspector General has lost a huge amount of records because of a single database crash?
Is someone incompetent running the Inspector Generals Office?
Do they freaking need some of us old time computer geek veterans to come over there and show them how NOT to be a total embarrassment?!
If what you did had the results you where going for it is not called "malicious intent". Oh, you mean in general, yeah, well, awkward.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
No need for that fancy stuff since it wasn't mission critical data
Must have been designed by Carnegie Mellon grads
RAID and distributed DB's are for HA, they are not a substitute for backups. Neither RAID nor a distributed DB will protect against corruption or accidental data loss - if someone deletes the wrong records, they'll be gone from both the primary and secondary database.
Any many people still think RAID-5 gives adequate protection against drive loss, which is no longer the case with modern large hard drives.
I don't know about that; Obama has been pretty open about wiping his ass with the Constitution.
Contrast Hilary Clinton, who has been involved in government since 1977 and her primary responsibility for 38 years has been cover ups and white-washing.
Trump is another who is pretty open about doing and saying things that people don't like.
You hit the nail on the head. I've probably encountered more broken backups than ones that work. Web hosting providers frequently provide backups that stopped working 10 months ago, but nobody noticed. If you haven't recently tested restoring your backups, you probably have no backups.
I like to use remote backups that I can restore from conveniently, so that I restore a file from time to time just because I messed up a couple paragraphs of text or something. These real-life, low-impact restores serve to verify backup and restore is working properly.
Blame the BBC for that one
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
Sound like the Air Force may have added Booby Tables to the Inspector Generals Records.
https://xkcd.com/327/
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
So is gross negligence. I can easily believe these idiots only maintained a years worth of backups and that there was no process in place to verify data integrity over time. It's a very common problem with government systems. They backup corrupted data and eventually no longer have a good version to record from. This of course is when there actually is a backup to begin with. Often a productive underling will develop a system to make his job easier and it will grow into a poorly supported critical system. It's even worse in the DOD where the staff rotate every 3-5 years.
We'll see ... but I'm willing to bet that there won't be ANY higher officers fired for this. Even though it means that some IG investigations/reports are now lost. Unless that is a feature that they wanted.
Money quote. Corruption is the feature, oversight/inspections are the bugs. Now you're thinking like upper brass and/or contractors.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
From the article:
The Air Force said it was notified on June 6 by a contractor that administers the database of records that the data within was "corrupted," according to a statement.
How many contractors administered the database? I wonder if that was part of the problem: "Oh, I thought you guys were going to back up the database ... No you were supposed to back it up."
If just one contractor was clearly responsible for the backup, then I wish the government would:
1) Fire the contractor, and never use them again.
2) Publicly announce the name of the contractor, so that we know not to use them.
(Of course a lot more needs to be done, such as making sure this doesn't happen again in any govt. dept.)
Delete on purpose to hide IG findings or are Hillary's server guys moonlighting?
Honest question though: are distributed systems plus snapshots a "backup?" What really makes a backup-- beyond ensuring no common mode failure option.
So you lost all your data and didn't have a backup? It's happened to all of us and somehow, life goes on.
At least you didn't spend the past 10 years implementing, maintaining, and testing a foolproof backup system, because that sounds like a real drag.
Take a look at this: http://www.thenation.com/article/the-national-security-expose-so-secret-even-edward-snowden-didnt-know-about-it/ where a former assistant Inspector General for the Pentagon claims whistleblowers were treated illegally. Neither the parent article nor that linked one inspire confidence in any DoD related Inspector General office.
I remember when I said stuff like that. You're pissed that parties are partisan. So cute. At this stage, you're still rooting for the team you picked, thinking that they aren't just as corrupt, playing you like a piano. Clinton has your name on a list of people like you. At this stage, you don't quite know the politicians' names (Chaney and Regan lol), but you're sure that the politicians on the other team are evil, while the politicians on the team you chose are good. You don't know the names of the Congressional commitees or agencies, or treaties, but you can almost get them half right as you parrot the propaganda you heard on last night's comedy show.
Later, you'll learn the names and start to understand a little bit about what they do. You'll be able to parrot the party propaganda and actually get it right. Hillary will move your name to another list.
Assuming you have an IQ above 87, after that you'll eventually realize what you've been regurgitating is silly propaganda, that Clinton's job since 1977 has been to figure out which lies stage 1 and stage 2 people will fall for.
That's a point generally forgotten when setting up backup systems; do test restores frequently to verify that they work and that you're still backing up the data you need. Nothing like having supposedly successful error-free backups for months, then when you need to restore something finding that all the tapes are blank (thanks Backup Exec!)
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Better than the Compaq tech which removed the GOOD drive, degaussed it, then couldn't figure out why the RAID wouldn't rebuild.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
You should have used triple drive RAID 1 then. The probability of deleting everything is less than 50%.
figures