Slice Details

In the slices window, double-click on a slice to get pop-up windows with some additional details.

If there are issues with the slice, that reason will be displayed.

Partial Slice Transfers

Copying an archive layer to a stack is incremental and can be interrupted.

If you stop a transfer before it's finished, the slice that was in the process of being copied will appear as partially transferred when you return to the slices window. Restarting the same copy will pick up right where it left off.

You may also find it useful to set a time limit on your cascade action, letting it run for say no more than 9 hours at a time. Any unfinished slice transfer will resume the next time the cascade action is started.

If you manuanlly start a different copy, one that does not include the partially transferred slice, that partial slice is discarded.

Verifying stacks

You can manually verify a stack's structure and/or data. You can also create a verify stack action, that can be scheduled to run periodically.

To verify a stack manually, show the stack's configuration pane in the archive's right sidebar. To the right of the stack's name, click the action button and choose one of the Verify commands. There are three levels:

Quick: Test that the stack is reachable and all parts are present.

Structure: After performing a quick test, all metadata (file, directory, layer) records are read and compared with those in the archive to make sure they agree. (This typically requires reading about 1-2% of the stack's content.)

Full: After the structure test completes, QRecall transfers all remaining data records and makes sure they are readable and match the data in the archive, where applicable.

Note that for AWS S3 and compatible cloud object containers, you should never have to perform a full verify. (In the final version of QRecall this option might not be available for those stack types.)

Deleting Stack Slices

Just as you can delete recent layers from an archive, you can delete recent layers from a stack.

Open the archive, open the slices window, and choose the "Delete slices in" action. Pick the layers in the stack you want discarded and click the Delete button.

Manual slice copy

There are two "manual" stack actions: "Copy to" and "Copy from". These actions will let you copy any slice from the archive to the stack, or from the stack to the archive,
within the rules of slice copying (of course).

Use this to update a slice that doesn't want to (because it wouldn't save enough space, for example), or recover the details of a merged layer that hasn't been updated yet.

Using (the) Force

Hold down the option key and "Copy to" and "Copy from" become the "Force copy to" and "Force copy from" actions. These are the same as the basic copy actions, but disable all safeguards. It will let you copy any slice, regardless of whether QRecall thinks this is a good idea or not.

Please exercise discretion when using these actions.

Compression

All records copied to a stack are compressed.

Recovered slices (copied from a stack back to an archive), remain compressed. So recovered layers/archives may occuy less disk space than they did originally.

Deleting Stacks

It's easy to delete a stack. In the archive's right sidebar, show the stacks pane.

To the right of each stack name is an action menu. Click it and choose Delete Stack....

The stack container will be erased and the stack's configuration will be removed from the archive.

Disconnecting Stacks

There are several commands useful in dealing with situations where the stack's container is lost or relocated.

The disconnect stack command will forget the stack configuration from an archive, without destroying its container. In the action menu, hold down the Option and Control keys and the Delete Stack command will change to Disconnect. This command removes the stack connection from the archive, but leaves the stack container intact.

It is your reponsibility to delete, relocate, or repurpose the container. But as long as it still exists, you can use the stack container to recover the stack or reconnect the archive to the stack again at some later date.

Reconnecting Stacks

If a stack's connection with its container is broken (for example, the container has moved to a different server), you can restore the connection using the Reconnect Stack command. In the stack sidebar, hold down the Option key and choose Reconnect Stack... from the action menu.

Fill in the connection details, exactly as if you were recovering from a stack. If the container agrees with the archive, the stack's connection is restored.

Reconnect a Forgotten Stack

If the archive no longer has a connection to the stack, it can still be reconnected. With the archive window open, hold down the Option key and the New > Stack command turns into New > Reconnect Stack. Again, choose the stack's type and fill in the details of the container's location. If successful, the stack will be added back to the archive.

Stack Container Format

Currently, the format and struture of all stack containers are interchangable, if not identical. For example, if you have a stack on AWS S3 and want to relocate it to a different cloud storage servce, you can (1) disconnect the archive from the AWS stack continer, (2) manually transfer the contents of the stack container package from AWS to a third-party S3 bucket, (3) reconnect the archive to the stack, but this time providing the S3-compatible bucket credentials instead.