[p4] checkpoint surgery?

[Jeff A. Bowles]

In classes, I say this about checkpoint-surgery:
    "If you want to change the binary db.* files, or the checkpoint
contents,
    do it with a tech support engineer on the other end of the phone line.
    Any instructions I would give you, or that a tech support engineer would
    give you, might be obsolete within a day. Always have them on the
    phone for anything that alters db.* directly or via a checkpoint
operation.
    Think of it this way: if you break it, you'll be calling them anyway.
So,
    give them a fighting chance to avoid the outage for your users."

Yes, it's paranoid.

But if you're paying for support, heck, pick up the phone for this one.
You REALLY want to have someone listening to the keystrokes and
saying "read that again over the phone before hitting return."

And if you're not paying for support, honestly, don't screw with your
checkpoints and db.* files. Not on a production server.

    Jeff Bowles
    Perforce Consulting Partner

ps. If you do something to a checkpoint with tech support on the line, and
three
days later you need to do the same thing again, call tech support again.
Don't
assume that the exact-same keystrokes are needed the second time, and
you still want the engineer to read the commands to, before modifying your
data.


On 9/1/06, Ken.Williams at thomson.com <Ken.Williams at thomson.com> wrote:
>
> Whoa.  You edited the binary DB file with a text editor?  You're either
> very brave, very foolish, or you know something about the structure of
> that file that I don't.  To me that file is an opaque binary with no
> user-serviceable parts inside it.  In particular, it might have internal
> checksums, indices, and so on.  Is the format actually known so that
> this edit operation is known to be safe?
>
> -Ken
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: perforce-user-bounces at perforce.com
> > [mailto: perforce-user-bounces at perforce.com] On Behalf Of Viery Lee
> > Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2006 9:14 PM
> > To: perforce-user at perforce.com
> > Subject: Re: [p4] How to reset superuser's password?
> >
> > Thanks Jeff.
> >
> > Now I resoved this problem.
> >
> > 1. On perforce server,  I find db.user file in perforce
> > installed directory.
> > 2. Open this file with text edit tool, such as editplus.
> > 3. I find serveral places of the superuser in this file,  and
> > after the
> > username, there is a 32 bit encrypted password. Then replace
> > the last one
> > with formal encrypted password.
> > 4. Finally I log into perforce.
> >
> > That's OK.
> >
> > Btw, if I use following command to change password: p4 passwd
> > username, then
> > when I login to perforce, will show "Invalid password". But
> > when I change
> > password in p4v, then login is OK.
> > I don't know the difference of this two way.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On 8/31/06, Jeff Grills < jgrills at drivensnow.org> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > Have you checked the P4 administrator's guide?
> > >
> > > One thing I've done in the past is to start up a new
> > unlicensed 2 user
> > > server, and set a password for a user.  Then I do a
> > checkpoint.  I take my
> > > normal server down, check point it, find the user record
> > for the super
> > > user,
> > > replace the password with the known one from the user in
> > the unlicensed
> > > server, and recover that one record into the normal server.  This
> > > technique
> > > is not for everyone to use, as it's certainly error prone
> > and importing a
> > > bad record into your DB may cause all kinds of craziness,
> > but it works
> > > with
> > > minimal impact on the rest of your server.
> > >
> > > j
> > >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: perforce-user-bounces at perforce.com
> > > [mailto:perforce-user-bounces at perforce.com ] On Behalf Of Viery Lee
> > > Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2006 4:12 AM
> > > To: perforce-user at perforce.com
> > > Subject: [p4] How to reset superuser's password?
> > >
> > >
> > > Hi, All,
> > >             I change server security levels by issue this
> > command: p4
> > > counter -f security 1. Then I reset the superuser's password.
> > >
> > >             But when I log in using new password I've set,
> > perforce server
> > > show the error: Password invalid.
> > >
> > >             How to resolve this problem?
> > > Rgds,
> > > Viery
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > perforce-user mailing list  -  perforce-user at perforce.com
> > > http://maillist.perforce.com/mailman/listinfo/perforce-user
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > http://maillist.perforce.com/mailman/listinfo/perforce-user
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
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>



-- 
---
Jeff Bowles - jab at piccoloeng.com