Woozle Hypertwin<p><strong>UPDATE 16:42</strong>: backupping is now taking place! (via recovery ISO -- see <a href="https://toot.cat/@riley/114009929482525080" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">this thread-branch</a>)</p><p>I'm waiting for <a href="https://toot.cat/tags/DigitalOcean" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>DigitalOcean</span></a> tech support on this ("within 24 hours"), but I honestly don't know if they will decide they can help or not.</p><p>Situation:</p><p>Server won't boot -- gets stuck at one of 2 or 3 different points in the bootup process (most often something to do with journaling).</p><p>I have recent backups of the databases -- but not the filesystem (our storage infra is in flux because the onboard LAN connector on my usual storage-managing system died and I haven't had time to set another one up yet)... which, I just realized, includes essentially all our emails since whenever the last filesystem backup was (which is sitting somewhere in that same local storage).</p><p>If it were a physical server, I could boot off a stick (or move the drive to another machine) in order to recover the data. The filesystem must be at least partly readable, or it wouldn't be trying to boot at all.</p><p>...or I could use the boot menu to run some diagnostics.</p><p>...but because it's a virtual machine, only the hosting company can access the main drive contents when it's not fully booted.</p><p>...and I don't know if they <em>will</em>.</p><p>I can't even <em>look</em> at a boot session until it gets to a certain point (way past the boot menu).</p><p>I made a snapshot of the drive as it now stands, and I made a new droplet from the snapshot, but it has the same problem.</p><p>One of my longtime complaints about DigOc is that you can't download disks or images thereof. I always figured this was a customer-lock-in thing, and reprehensible but whattya gonna do -- but now it's actively preventing me from accessing data. I can't download the drive contents, I can't download the snapshot, and I can't even attach the drive as storage on another droplet. (This last wouldn't even reduce customer lock-in, so I don't know why it isn't a thing.)</p><p>...and I can't think that DigOc would be willing to just dump the contents onto an attachable drive if they don't offer that option via the cpanel.</p><p>Any ideas?</p><p><a href="https://toot.cat/tags/techHelp" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>techHelp</span></a></p>