Starting archiving project using Quadra 610

[johnklos]

I've seen plenty of threads over the years about various web resources and sites disappearing. People put up mirrors, but sometimes those disappear, too. I decided to do something about this.

I'm putting a 2 terabyte drive in to a Quadra 610 which runs NetBSD. On it I'll host and mirror:

mac68k / macbsd.org (from Allen Briggs, who the Q610 is named for)

Penelope A/UX content

Pre-OS X software updates

An OS X compatible Software Update repository

A Geocities mirror

A backup to us3.aminet.net (which I already host)

Would anyone like to suggest other resources which should be kept in a safe and reliable place? I have no problem hosting files indefinitely, since I run my own machines.

 

[techknight]

Definately Mac OS 10.2 through 10.5 software updates, plus all the java, security, etc.. updates. 

All the Mac os 9 updates. 

 

[raoulduke]

Since you didn't list parameters for possible content-additions, I'd push for backing up unna.org [united Network of Newton Archives].  I'm backing it up personally - because it's gone down a few times and I think if it went down indefinitely or permanently it'd do irreparable damage to the Newton-using community.  Still, it'd be nice to have a stable, guaranteed, server.  Although the total size of their content is larger than you'd think.

 

[johnklos]

I can't think of any parameters other than the archive will be on a 2 TB drive (which leaves at least 1.9 trillion bytes after accounting for the Mac OS, NetBSD and swap partitions) and that any files archived should be resources which people here care about. I'll add unna.org to the list. Any idea about the size?

Partitioning a 2 TB drive in Mac OS 8.1 isn't easy! I had to use Apple Drive Setup 1.7.3 (patched) to initialize it, specifying two HFS Extended partitions (it doesn't like volumes larger than 1 TB), then I brought the drive to a PowerBook running Tiger and used pdisk to delete the HFS partitions, then added a 512 meg partition as HFS Standard, a 60 gig Apple_UNIX_SVR2 root partition for NetBSD, a 512 meg Apple_UNIX_SVR2 swap, and the rest as an Apple_UNIX_SVR2 for the archives.

If I partitioned using the PowerBook, the disk wouldn't be bootable on the Quadra and I couldn't update the drivers using tools on the Quadra. No other utilities would work properly in Mac OS 8.1 except Silverlining Lite 1.something which was able to create one large 2TB HFS Standard partition.

NetBSD is installing now...

 

[johnklos]

NetBSD is installed and the system is running well. I got unna.org mirrored and it's only about 700 megabytes. It'll probably need some file massaging, but I'll worry about that when the Quadra is on its public IP which'll happen in the next day or two. The A/UX Penelope and older software updates are copying now.

Does anyone want to help? I can give shell accounts to anyone who'd like to set up and maintain an archive.

 

[markyb86]

I don't know what kind of help I could be, but I would love to assist. 

 

[Macdrone]

AOL used to have a huge MAC archive if you can find it. As much as I loathe AOL now it was awesome place for software on the start of the Internet.

 

[johnklos]

markyb86: Can you program in any language? Can you make simple web pages? Some sites might need a new index. unna.org, for instance, uses php for queries, so many of the top level pages will have to be regenerated.

Macdrone: Do you know where any archives currently exist? I saw this work:

http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=AOL

It'd always be preferable to start with someone else's work rather than start from scratch.

 

[markyb86]

I know just CSS/PHP/HTML, so I might actually be able to help with the indexes.

 

[johnklos]

The machine is physically ready and I'm about to bring it to its permanent home where it'll have a public IP. The 2 TB drive can be seen here:

http://www.macbsd.org/~john/quadra610/

When it's up and has DNS pointing to it, I'll post URLs of the archives we have. So far we have about 4.5 gigs of archives copied (unna.org and older Apple software downloads are copying now).

 

[raoulduke]

Awesome. Thank you. I'd like to help but I'm not much of a programmer anymore.

You might include this, also, as it doesn't appear to be attached either to UNNA's archive or search function.  I guess maybe they were early mirrors of PlanetNewton that UNNA preserved but never integrated into the search feature?

http://mirrors.unna.org/download.planetnewton.com/download/

Probably a lot of the files there are on UNNA, but some (notably for how I found this: Easy Connect) are not.

 

[CC_333]

What a marvelous idea!

Tendim had expressed a desire to have info-mac mirrored in a 68k-friendly form, and I agree. I downloaded it a few years ago, but I don't have the bandwidth to do anything with it now.

Also, I'd like to add perhaps umich. It seems like that is a good thing to mirror.

I don't know of anything else, except maybe including Mac OS X 10.0.x and 10.1.x updates in addition to all the 10.2.x through 10.5.x stuff. And this doesn't include simply combo updates, but any and ll updates that were relevant to a given version.

I only know basic HTML and CSS (and most of it is forgotten), so I'm probably not of much help in that regard.

c

 

[johnklos]

CC_333: Do you still have your copy of the info-mac files? If so, would you be willing to upload them? Also, do you know of a good source for the umich files? (I'm on my phone at the moment, else I'd check...)

 

[galgot]

If I may suggest another resource to save is :

http://www.rhapsodyos.org

Which is the best ( and only ?) info site on MacOSX-Server.

I've not seen the site been updated for a long while, the owner (RacerX) was active on some forums but that was a while ago.

So before it goes...

recently found this too :

http://next.68k.org

It's very NeXT oriented as the url says, but checking the "otto" directory, in "MacOSX" or "apple.com" directories, there is lots of things of interest.

 

[johnklos]

rhapsodyos.org and next.68k.org are downloading now. Apache is set up but only for testing so far:

http://briggs.zia.io

 

[Elfen]

What would you need, JohnKlos? Just let me know the set up and if directory listing is set on Apache and the webpage should be easy. If not (or security reasons), I can have a perl script scour a directory and give a formatted and linked file director dump.

 

[johnklos]

Hey, Fernando! It'd be neat if you or anyone else could take the time to either write a few scripts or manually make a web page as an index for each of the archived sites, plus a main page which lists all the archives. I can make a copy of your account from andromeda, if you're willing to give it a try.

 

[Elfen]

I'll give it a try, just let me know how it is set up - what files are where and what files you want accessed in those directories.

 

[rickrob]

I may have some files to contribute-- I found a CD of all of the Daystar Digital Drivers in my pile of stuff.  I can write code too.