WinZIP

[yrieithydd]

I am attempting to back up my PhD onto Pelican. One of the constraints of Pelican is not having lots of little files so I want to Zip up my files before I transfer them. Unfortunately WinZip (on the PWF) keeps crashing when I try to do this. After it has been transferring the data it says:

Could not replace original Zip file! New Zip left as U:\Backups\WZ128E.tmp.
Ok Help

When I click ok it asks whether I want to see the log file. This tells me the last file successfully ends:

Adding MyTex/GwedyYnol/GwedyYnolDiagramho.eps
Adding MyTex/GwedyYnol/
copying Zip file
Warning: replace: could not rename U:\Backups\WZ138E.tmp
Could not replace original Zip file! New Zip left as U:\Backups\WZ138E.tmp

Why? After this had happened last time I tried backing up, I noticed that my quote was at 93% and I wondered if this was related, but I deleted some stuff (mainly it has to be said the .tmp files which had been created by those unsuccessful attempts and before the last attempt I was at 48% of quota (so around 125MB free). Now I'm at 56% because of the .tmp file.

What should I do?

Comments

[caliston.livejournal.com]

I haven't used a PWF machine for years, but ISTR having trouble burning CDs on the PWF for similar quota reasons. Could you create the Zip in C:\temp or D:\temp (the local harddrive) and then copy it across?

WinZip does odd things, especially if you right click on something and go 'Add to Zipfile'. I think it's better if you create a new zipfile and add things to it rather than try to add things to an existing zipfile. The zip format maintains a table at the end with all the files, their lengths and offsets within the zip so that things like WinZip can do random access to files. If you add things to the file WinZip has to move this table around and update it - I don't see why it needs a new file to do this but it might find it easier to make a copy of the file as it alters it.

Aha - that table might be the reason that making very large Zips (100K-1M files) is slow for me, because every file involves updating all of the table making it an O(n^2) operation (ie the time taken scales with the square of the number of objects).

[mair_in_grenderich]

What should I do?

Copy the .tmp to pelican and then rename it?

[emperor]

I'd suggest doing something like:

ssh rcu20@linux.pwf.cam.ac.uk
tar -czvf ./Backups/somename.tar.gz ./directory-you-want-to-back-up
scp ./Backups/somename.tar.gz pelican.cam.ac.uk:~/

If you want a script to run, I have something that date-stamps the tarballs it creates, and removes old ones when it uploads new ones...

[yrieithydd.livejournal.com]

Aah the `Windows is being silly, so use Linux instead' approach!

What I want to back up is on my memory stick so Drive E, It is in three directories (MyTex, My Documents, and localtexmf -- this is because I want to keep the same file structure there as on my actual computer). There is also stuff on the top level of the memory stick because that is where I stick stuff for transferring between machines!

I do not understand how to tell it to go to drive E. I assume that ./directory-you-want-to-back-up will look for it on my PWF drive. Actually is it impossible to do it directly because E is on the machine I'm on and it doesn't know about that?

If you want a script to run, I have something that date-stamps the tarballs it creates, and removes old ones when it uploads new ones...

On pelican? on my PWF?

[yrieithydd.livejournal.com]

But if I copy the stuff from the E:drive to the PWF drive then I end up at 96% of quota which then means that it dies on me when I try and compress it and it won't let me create a folder on C.

[caliston.livejournal.com]

What I want to back up is on my memory stick so Drive E

PWF Linux? [ducks]

I do not understand how to tell it to go to drive E

How are you creating the archive? If I run WinZip, go File->New Archive it asks me what name I want to give it.

If you're feeling geeky, you can change Options->Configuration, Folders tab, Working Folder and Temp Folder to point to some scratch space that you can write to - like your flash disc, though that'll be slow, or a temp drive (C:\temp used to work for me a few years ago)

[yrieithydd.livejournal.com]

It was telling linux to transfer the file from E to pelican that I was confused by.

[caliston.livejournal.com]

Ah, right. You won't be able to do that with remote PWF Linux as Matthew suggests since it knows nothing about your local drives. You could upload all the files with WinSCP to /tmp/rcu20 on the remote PWF Linux machine if you wanted though and then tar them from there.

You /could/ boot your PWF machine into PWF Linux and do it from there (restart Windows, machine reboots, a menu comes up asking to choose Linux or Windows). Boot Linux, then the FAQ tells you how to mount your flash drive:
http://www-uxsup.csx.cam.ac.uk/pwf-linux/faq/
Then your files will appear in /media/whatever as it says.

I think both of these fit into the making-more-trouble-for-yourself category though :-)