Jon Lewis <jlewis@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > On Fri, 10 Apr 2009, Robin Hill wrote: > >> On Fri Apr 10, 2009 at 12:22:44PM -0700, Timothy D. Lenz wrote: >> >>> How can cp not work? every guide I found used ether cp or rsync. Even >>> guides on seting up an auto backup system use cp or rsync. >>> Seems the only files/folders that shouldn't get copied are the block >>> device ones that are created at boot and are not really on the drive. >>> >> They'll all get copied, but you won't necessarily get the correct >> contents. Because the system is in use: >> - files will be being written, so you'll either get a partial copy, or >> an old version. >> - files may be locked, so you won't be able to copy them. >> >> Doing a backup of a running system using cp/rsync will work fine for a >> lot of things (especially for config files, documents, etc) but will >> almost certainly fail miserably for some (databases for example). What one can easily do is rsync the running system, then init 1 and rsync again to get all the changed or blocked files. In runlevel 1 there should be nothing left blocking files. MfG Goswin -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html