On Thursday, Dec 11, 2003, at 15:10 America/New_York, Ken Rossman wrote:
What should I be using to do full system dumps of a RedHat Linux system
these days? I've been blithely using 'dump', but I've only just discovered
that this is a no-no. Other tools I've used have other problems (i.e. in
older version of 'tar', I know that sparse files had their "holes" filled
in with zeros, and I'm still not exactly sure what 'tar' does with device
special files... same for any other tool).
I want to be able to do a full restore of a working system directly from
a backup set of some kind, including all protections being put back the
way they were, device special files being properly restored, symlinks
remaining symlinks, and sparse files retaining their exact original
format (and who knows what else I'm not thinking of right now).
Is something like gtar smart enough to do this these days? Can cpio do it?
Am I missing a tool here?
Thanks, Ken
The last time this came up on the list (IIRC), the consensus isn't that dump is a no-no any more than gtar, it's just that each of them has a small chance, of F*ing up the backup (without your knowledge until you can't restore the system) if the filesystem is active while the backup occurs. Then a lot of hand-wringing ensues about mirroring with RAID 1, breaking the mirror, dumping the inactive part, syncing back up and then going on with your day -OR- using some snapshots software to perform a similar function . Search the list tho, as this is not an uncommon question.
Jurvis LaSalle
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