[esp-r] Cygwin and ESP-r disaster recovery....

[Jon Hand]

People who are using Cygwin to run ESP-r might want to consider the following
disaster recovery actions.

If your Cygwin and/or ESP-r is currently working today, there will be a point in time
in the future when a butterfly in Panama will flap its wings in just the way needed
to cause your software to not work in some way that causes you great frustration....

When that happens you will fondly remember that day in early June 2011 when 
you spent a few minutes....for low cost insurance.

If you want to roll back time you need a backup technique.  Cygwin is essentially
a folder structure within a Windows machine and a couple of configuration files
lurking in the Documents and Settings folder.  And there might also be some
files that were downloaded by the Setup.exe that you used to setup Cygwin
on your computer.

Search on your computer for files that include the name cygwin.  Take note of
these.  Backup what was initially downloaded (the setup.exe and the hundreds of
compressed files that were used in setting up Cygwin) and the settings files.  Burn
them to a DVD along with a readme file that gives a synopsis of these files and
their original locations.  You could use this collection of files if you need to
rebuild Cygwin.   Why would you want to do that?  Cygwin is constantly evolving 
and new libraries and applications are being added which have not yet been tested.
Getting an all-new Cygwin might or might not solve problems.

Next - the folder cygwin may include thousands of files but it can still be 'zipped'
up like any other collection of files.  There are several tools that will compress
nests of folders if you right click on the top folder.  Use them!  And then burn
the resulting 'zip' or '7z' file to a DVD.  Note the date and version of ES-r.

If stuff evolves within Cygwin or ESP-r then you might repeat the process
again - giving the archive files a slightly different name etc.  Recovery
is essentially a matter of moving the mangled Cygwin folder out of the way
and unzipping the archive so that the clock has been returned to that earlier
happier time.

If the work you do is important consider techniques that will get you
up and running again quickly.  On ebay you can get an old clunker of
a computer for pocket change.  Replicate your working system and
use if to test your recovery techniques.  

Happy archiving......   -Jon Hand