Victoria University of Wellington Accidentally Deletes All Files Stored On Desktop Computers (newshub.co.nz) 142
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Newshub: Victoria University of Wellington has accidentally deleted all files stored on its desktop computers affecting a "significant" number of staff members -- as well as some students. A spokesperson for the University confirmed to Newshub on Thursday that an unexpected issue wiped all files saved on the desktops. "The University's Digital Solutions team continues to work with all affected staff and students to recover access to files and in many cases the issues have been resolved," they said. "There are however, some affected staff and students who have not been able to recover access to files."
The aim of the data wipe was to clear inactive users' data by getting rid of profiles of students who no longer studied, reports student magazine Critic. Critic spoke to one Masters student who had heard of PHD students losing an entire year's worth of data. The university spokesperson said they apologized for the inconvenience caused and is investigating the issue to ensure it doesn't happen again.
The aim of the data wipe was to clear inactive users' data by getting rid of profiles of students who no longer studied, reports student magazine Critic. Critic spoke to one Masters student who had heard of PHD students losing an entire year's worth of data. The university spokesperson said they apologized for the inconvenience caused and is investigating the issue to ensure it doesn't happen again.
bad link (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:bad link (Score:5, Informative)
Read it at the register [theregister.com]
Backup, backup, backup (Score:2, Insightful)
Who stores all of their data in one place?
Re: Backup, backup, backup (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Backup, backup, backup (Score:5, Informative)
Who stores all of their data in one place?
Students. Seriously, I've setup backup systems for friends and family only to discover when they lost files they never bothered to use them.
Re:Backup, backup, backup (Score:5, Interesting)
I've setup backup systems for friends and family only to discover when they lost files they never bothered to use them.
Unless a backup system is fully automatic, backups simply won't happen.
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I've setup backup systems for friends and family only to discover when they lost files they never bothered to use them.
Unless a backup system is fully automatic, backups simply won't happen.
True. Mine was (pre-cloud days) except it required plugging in the backup disk to a USB port, which never seemed to happen...
Re:Backup, backup, backup (Score:5, Insightful)
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What I have seen the past 40+ years is that almost everybody learns the value of backups the hard way.
I was fortunate, so to speak, to have learned it early in my work life - and early enough that I wasn’t the one in charge of the system (back in the pre-PC days).
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What I have seen the past 40+ years is that almost everybody learns the value of backups the hard way.
About your own data I agree, but what about data that belongs to others? It's not my job to backup my employer's data, nor my universities. In fact the backup was explicitly part of the service they provide.
This isn't some grandma's home computer with a 6 year old HDD in it. You expect certain things when you store data on your roaming / cloud profiles on other people's managed systems.
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Especially a PhD candidate. WTF??
Yeah, you'd think these people would be most diligent about making sure all their data is backed up and secured. Years of work could be lost in the blink of an eye (such as this story).
And yet, you'd be wrong. I know many people with Phds who can barely function using a computer. To them, anything involving protecting data is an after thought.
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What's your point? The files that were deleted were stored on the desktop systems, while the files on the file server were not deleted (and were also backed up).
As for backups by individuals: most people simply don't.
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Everyone who relies on someone else's management strategy. It's not my job to backup my employers data either. Likewise it wasn't my job to manage the backups of my university of school accounts.
Like ransomware? (Score:3)
Like ransomware but skipping the payment step.
Re:Like ransomware? (Score:5, Funny)
Like ransomware but skipping the payment step.
They prepaid - it's called tuition.
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But with ransomware usually after you pay you get your data back.
Obligatory Eddie Izzard (Score:2)
"We know the people with techno-fear. They're there, on the computer, going; What... oh... oh... I... I've wiped the file? Oh damn. What... I've wiped all the files?? I've wiped the internet?!? Oh no... I don't even have a modem!"
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We call them cable/DSL/cellular MODEMS.
Re: Obligatory Eddie Izzard (Score:2)
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What is this 1990? (Score:3)
Most desktops should just be a deployable image, with user data residing on servers that are backed up frequently (and with tested restores of course).
This saves money, since you don't need large drives on desktops, maybe some more memory for people who use lots and lots of applications simultaneously.
If you're depending on "other peoples" computers to keep your data, you're probably going to regret it.
romaing profiles? Why not roll back the AD server? (Score:2)
romaing profiles? Why not roll back the AD server / File share server??
It may need lead to an Forced re sync or maybe we need to roll back all / most of the AD servers and then let the network resync all data.
Re:What is this 1990? (Score:5, Informative)
It's right in our handbook. "Store important files on your network home folder, not exclusively on your local hard drive. Local hard drives are not backed up or protected against data loss, and office/lab computers are subject to reimage and swap-out without notice."
Lab computers are ALWAYS wiped between semesters, although office computers we usually keep the hard drives after a swap, becaue there will always be instructors that whine about losing an important document that somehow wasn't important enough to store on the network where files are protected. Occasionally a hard drive crashes though, they lose everything on their local drive, and we feel no pity whatsoever.
Learn to follow directions, people!
The only people that keep significant data on their local drives are in graphic design (big multi-file linked graphics) or digital mass media (large raw unedited video) which can't perform well even on our fast storage and gig network, but their instructors pound into them the habit of frequently copying back to the network share.
Need us to restore something you deleted or an older version of a file you had stored on the network share? No problem, we have you covered. Got your computer swapped last night and need a file off your desktop? We can probably help, but read the handbook or you're going to get burned eventually. Computer won't boot this morning and HDD is clicking but need that powerpoint off your Desktop for a meeting this afternoon? Prepare for a painful lesson on the subject of following directions... (and I don't care WHO you are, your title doesn't exempt you from the Laws of Physics)
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It's right in our handbook. "Store important files on your network home folder, not exclusively on your local hard drive. Local hard drives are not backed up or protected against data loss, and office/lab computers are subject to reimage and swap-out without notice."
That's ignorant and presumptuous. The School wiped inactive accounts and hit active accounts. The mistake that wipes data on PCs would very easily also wipe network drives, or delete cloud account logins.
Learn to follow directions, people!
You should tell that to the administrators. This wasn't some random hardware failure.
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On the contrary, I consider user data very important but that doesn't mean you should expect everyone to bend over backward for you and spend lavishly when you yourself are being reckless with your data.
You want us to back up files we TOLD you not to store there? Fine, here's an estimate for the installation of additional hardware and yearly software licenses, along with yearly maintenance and the cost of periodic hardware refreshes. And
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All of that is a valid thing to say to someone whose files were lost because of a technical glitch... not administrator error.
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My university had that policy, but also only allocated something like 5mb per student. They network was pretty slow too. NetWare if I recall.
As such many students had to use local files.
Spectacular Dumbarses (Score:5, Insightful)
You do NOT delete files like this, ever.
You move them and let them ripen for a while, then delete them, preferably after backing them up to archival storage before even moving them, just in case the move goes wrong and all the files wind up getting moved to the same filename or something.
Noobs in positions of power equals fail
Idiots in charge of hiring equals fail
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None of which conflicts at all with what I said.
None of which will be any comfort to whatever percentage of people will not get their files back.
Sure, everyone should do backups of any data that is important to them. But that's no excuse for someone else deleting their files because they failed to do due diligence.
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What sort of shitty organisation do you work at that in 2021 gives you only 5GB of network storage?
Multi-level failure (Score:5, Informative)
The link article is region blocked, https://arstechnica.com/gadget... [arstechnica.com]
The issue is not a single point of failure, it is failure at multiple levels, not having an proper system of backups in place, not properly testing and not having appropriate processes in place to ensure best practice.
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From the Ars Technica article:
> over-zealous Active Directory policy
One big benefit for working from home : not having to use my government-managed desktop.
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The Ars article is written by a fucking idiot.
> For items of significant personal importance—such as a PhD student's thesis—it's unwise to rely entirely on the IT department to safeguard the data in the first place. There's no substitute for taking responsibility for your own data and keeping regular, tested backups of your own.
Actually no. That's the IT department's job. It's what they're fucking paid for. In a university. Where everyone is basically a knowledge worker a
Re: Multi-level failure (Score:2)
First off, per the summary most users have been fully restored, presumably from backups.
The most likely scenario is that a small percentage of users bucked university policy and stored their files someplace outside the University's backup policy, and the file clean up effort included removing user files improperly stored on local drives.
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No, they stored their files on the desktop. Which is a completely acceptable and logical thing to do. The university's IT boffins failing to allow for this is kinda Apple-level incompetence.
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It's the Ars of Tech. They have to stand in a circle, point at somebody they dislike, and downvote anybody who has the "wrong" opinion. Otherwise, they won't know what to think about it.
You're asking them to consider a second possibility. This is not compatible with their method of acquiring I-know-ledge.
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They shouldn't be EXPECTED to keep their own backups but I would certainly advise anyone using someone else's computer to do so anyway. That very much includes anyone using "cloud services".
"doesn't happen again" (Score:2)
>"investigating the issue to ensure it doesn't happen again."
You can't. Period. If humans are involved, mistakes WILL happen again. Might not be as bad, might not affect as much data, might take many years, but rest assured, entropy wins. This is the reason nobody should rely on data existing in a single place that is vulnerable to being lost through a mistake or failure. It is probably the most important rule in I.T..
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You can set the default save location to a networked share located on a server which is properly backed up.
You can ensure that users are not able to save files to the local disk by leaving them with no writable areas.
You can ensure that any data saved to a local disk is wiped whenever the user logs out (even reimage the entire os back to a clean state incase the user screwed anything up). They will soon learn, and will lose at most one day's worth of work before learning not to save on the temporary local d
I am sure they have valid and recent backups. (Score:2)
I've been out of IT for a long time. (Score:2)
So can anyone tell me, is there a *good* reason that IT departments don't use filesystems with a checkpointing feature?
Back in my day we didn't because there were no such things. Although it's obvious now that Oracle's *internal* storage must have used copy-on-write to achieve their then unique levels of transaction isolation, they kept that particular secret sauce very secret.
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There are multiple journaling filesystems but this would require the IT department to do more than install Windows and put their feet up. Dollars to donuts everything was stored on NTFS and slaved to one of Microsoft's many shitty server-side protocols.
Re: I've been out of IT for a long time. (Score:3, Informative)
The system worked - files properly stored on central servers were already restored, the summary says MOST users have already been restored. The most likely scenario is that a small percentage of users opted to store their work on local drives that aren't backed up.
The choice of operating system doesn't enter into it - this is a result of admin error cleaning up a central file server, it could just as easily happened in a Windows, a Mac, and, yes, even in a Linux environment.
We are pleased to inform you... (Score:2)
We are pleased to inform you that the people responsible for hiring the BOFH have been sacked.
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That's University of Waikato, not Wellington. A long, long time ago.
Reminds me of something that happened at work (Score:2)
So our user profiles were split across multiple servers. National wanted us to consolidate to a single server so my coworker was charged with the task. He copied most of the servers over, but on one server he decided to try out robocopy in mirror mode. By the time he realized his mistake, mirror mode had deleted most of the folders on the destination to make it match the source directory.
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Well surely that only caused him the inconvenience of having to start the copies again from scratch, as he can't possibly have been stupid enough to delete the data from the original servers until he's sure the entire process is complete and fully functional, right?
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If only it was that straightforward. We worked at a place where part of the decommissioning process for anything with a hard drive is to degauss the hard drive, then put it through a hard drive splitter. We would always remove the magnets for ourselves first.
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Let me get this straight (Score:2)
OS is not mentioned and little detail, but I can assume these desktops were windows and I would guess laptops. Not a single young person I know would use a desktop unless thay are a hard-core gamer. Nevermind the space a desktop would take up in a dorm room.
So, someone on the network kicked off a process that went and deleted all files on everyone's desktop ? That means students left there systems active, logged in and on the network even after leaving school ? Most young people I know "close" their lap
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Any modern computer, laptops included, can be woken up or even powered on via remote network commends to perform various administrative tasks.
Search for wake-on-LAN. I was going to provide the wikipedia link, but apparently, Slashdot is now too stupid to distinguish between a link and ASCII art.
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Well that is interesting and unsettling, I never knew it was possible. I did google and on Linux you can use ethtool(8) to set or disable it.
On my system, it is unavailable with wireless. Next reboot I will see if I have a BIOS switch to turn it off.
Thanks
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Yeah, it's typically off by default for consumer hardware, since it's otherwise it's clearly a security concern / threat vector.
The next story you hear about the "Intel Management Engine", you'll know more what they're talking about (I've mostly learned about this from previous Slashdot stories). That's the subsystem that's always on if the board is receiving power, even when the computer is otherwise "off". And naturally, any security flaw in that module is a very huge deal, and why many are disturbed b
Really? (Score:2)
Dear College IT lab technicians. (Score:2)
Hi there! I'm going to save you a lot of time and aggravation, so please read.
When you setup a computer lab image, once you make a default profile the way you want or have a mandatory profile, sysprep the machine and deploy the master image, make sure to add the "Domain Users", "Authenticated users" or even "Everyone" to the local guests group. That way, when the person logs off, the profile deletes itself and you don't have to run risky profile cleanup scripts that screw up your whole lab, just keep in min
Why do they even have logins? (Score:2)
University staff does not even have a login on my machine, they'd have to physically come to my office and wipe my HD by booting with a live medium or into /bin/bash, or destroy it physically. And then there are still backups of everything.
I thought one of the things you learn in university by example is to not trust institutions and bureaucracies.
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/bin/bash
Because you're running a real OS, not something that requires you to log in to a "domain" that has "policies" which can take complete ownership of your computer, on the assumption that you are one of the faceless minions that barely knows which side of the keyboard to type on. On the other hand, you don't get a roaming profile where you can transparently access all your files from a random pool of PCs, and I'm sure you rightly don't give a single fuck about that.
oh come on (Score:2)
This is really the best way to learn.
Desktop computers are not to be used for storage.
You know now. good.
Very, very familiar problem (Score:2)
This is a chronic and dangerous problem in the software world. One group has a set archival policy. "Everything is in Subversion: you are not paid until your work is in a release, stored in the central Subversion repo". Another has a different policy. says "the git branches, git branches clutter the CI/CD autobuilding pipeline". Another group relies on tags to preserve releases.
Then people start storing binary files and ISO images in source control, and the repositories erupt. in size, cost, and the time to
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the risk of simply typographical errors doing an "rm -rf $VARIABLENAME/" without VARIABLENAME being set, and wiping much of the filesystem.
Or even better, $VARIABLENAME contains spaces.
BOfH in me thinks... (Score:2)
Year worth of data? (Score:2)
New sysop sure made an entry (Score:2)
...and an exit.
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And what sort of PhD student doesn't do so much as back up to a flash drive every so often?
OneDrive, iCloud Drive and Google Drive (Score:3)
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What martynhare said plus
It's called survival of the fittest.
-Darwin
It's not the strongest, the fastest, nor the smartest, it's the ones most adapted to the environment. There is always the BOFH lurking in the dark recesses of IT.
Secondly, this is a good thing in a way. People need to learn that lesson before they get a job with responsibility for others. It's one thing when students loses their dissertation, it's another when a departmental self-made database containing years of medical data is lost becaus
But the modem is having trouble connecting! (Score:2)
Hard to use cloud storage when your modem keeps making strange noises and losing the connection! Darned audio coupler!
But seriously, if the university is so broke that they needed to free up the local storage, then it's quite likely that the network connectivity is poor, too. The optimistic case is to believe it was just a stupid Sysop from Hell? Cue the rationalizations and excuses and armpits. ("Everyone has 'em and they all stink.")
Too bad the story hasn't provoked more jokes, even though I feel quite so
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Darn, I forgot to include the NO CARRIER joke:
Yip, yip, yip, yip, yip.
BANG.
NO TERRIER
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This is just as much a story of student incompetence
Honestly you're post is full of complete ignorance.
1) You simply think the fault of the user to trust random guy 1 instead of random guy 2.
2) You think that a cloud service problem is unable to blitz data in two locations at once (seriously, do you not understand what syncing clients do?)
3) You make large assumptions as to the nature of the data the student is working on. I don't know many PhD students, but a few of those I do know have datasets that run into the many TB.
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Re:Irish virus strikes again (Score:5, Insightful)
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They trust then with their education. Why not their backups?*
*Double bonus if school has a CS program.
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And what sort of PhD student doesn't do so much as back up to a flash drive every so often?
A copy on a flash drive is not a backup (although it might just save your bacon). Flash drives are far too unreliable for any kind of serious backup strategy.
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Yes, you might very well be able to get your files back from a flash drive (as I said) but there is also a significant probability that you won't - hence why they're not suitable for the kind of backups you need to rely on.
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And what sort of PhD student doesn't do so much as back up to a flash drive every so often?
Ones that didn’t grow up with Windows 95/98/Me.
Re:Irish virus strikes again (Score:5, Insightful)
And what sort of PhD student doesn't do so much as back up to a flash drive every so often?
What sort of university wipes all user files and doesn’t have a backup? Users are, mostly, naive. Whoever’s running the computers there is suppose to know users are naive and have backups of backups so nothing is lost. How has no one been fired for this?
Re: Irish virus strikes again (Score:2, Insightful)
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>> How has no one been fired for this?
My guess:
because the person to be fired is currently helping / attempting to restore the data.
When this mini-project is done, they'll probably be asked to leave.
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>> How has no one been fired for this?
My guess:
because the person to be fired is currently helping / attempting to restore the data.
When this mini-project is done, they'll probably be asked to leave.
You just spent all that energy teaching the guy a very valuable lesson. Why fire him now ? Just ask him to write a plan/roadmap to make sure this will *never* happen again. And them give him leeway to execute such plan.
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Most computer users these days are naive. How many OSes have a proper backup utility included?
It's easy to blame the university, but this cowboy attitude regarding the safety of peoples' data is a problem throughout the entire computer industry. People have been told to make backups for decades, but due to a lack of integrated solutions, the primary way people have been doing it is to drag-and-drop to a flash drive.
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People have been told to make backups for decades, but due to a lack of integrated solutions, the primary way people have been doing it is to drag-and-drop to a flash drive.
Which, if not perfect, works just fine.
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And what sort of PhD student doesn't do so much as back up to a flash drive every so often?
I remember back when I was in a PL/1 programming class, we always had backups. If you lost your punched card deck you could still refer to the program printout. :)
Re: Irish virus strikes again (Score:2)
its new zealand mate, a 4 GB flash drive is $6000, google drive is $18000 a month. an S3 bucket is more than the annual GDP of the nation.
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THIS. When I clean out "old" accounts, I tar gzip the home directory before I wipe it. If after a year nobody complains that their home directory is gone, THEN it can be presumed to be truly inactive and the archive can be deleted.
Every once in a great while, there is a complaint and the data is easily restored.
It's also a nice courtesy in case someone DID mean to delete the account and then realizes after the fact that there was that one file they forgot to get a copy of first.
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IT support suicide, but this is what Microsoft wants to make sure that everyone uses "OneDrive", the drive to rule them all.
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IT support suicide, but this is what Microsoft wants to make sure that everyone uses "OneDrive", the drive to rule them all.
In this one instance, Microsoft did something right with OneDrive. Since we moved to it several years ago, we have always stated and reinforced to people they must store all their documents in OneDrive. Whenever we do our replacements, the notices which go out explicitly state users must make sure all their documents are on OneDrive as we will not have time to do any backups at the time of installs.
Every now and then we still have someone who can't follow this simple direction and loses files, but on the
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Which works if you have a working internet connection.
I trust USB sticks more than OneDrive for my data.
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This is why all technical degrees and probably most other degrees should require a computer literacy class in the first semester, or equivalent experience.
Schools in general have a blind spot around computer literacy, though. When I worked for a while in a community college doing PC support, what I discovered is that something between a significant minority and an actual majority of educational staff lack some of the skills allegedly required to hold their position. Specifically, they are undereducated in t
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why do you imagine any student, entering kindergarten after the turn of the century managed to avoid any basic computer classes before they started their post-graduate studies?
Because some of them don't have basic computing skills. I know this for a fact because I have had to explain basics to them in the course of supporting them.
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My personal feeling on this subject (and I work supporting HPC in a University) is if they are studying for a PhD that means they have a fucking degree. If they can't manage to look after there data then they should simply not have a degree in the first place and certainly are not suitable candidates to study for a PhD.
If they are undergraduates, then they are studying for a degree and if they can't look after their data then they don't deserve a degree.
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