From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([69.77.167.62] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1JVivh-0007A0-Rn for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Sun, 02 Mar 2008 07:48:17 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 0441EE04A8; Sun, 2 Mar 2008 07:48:16 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail.jaquet.dk (unknown [90.184.2.114]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C398DE04A8 for ; Sun, 2 Mar 2008 07:48:15 +0000 (UTC) Received: by mail.jaquet.dk (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 32BE34008F; Sun, 2 Mar 2008 08:48:15 +0100 (CET) Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2008 08:48:15 +0100 From: Rasmus Andersen To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Ghosting a Ext3 partition Message-ID: <20080302074815.GK9879@avlebavle.dk> References: <200802291227.35724.Jonathan.Haws@sdl.usu.edu> <959274.49799.qm@web31707.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <20080301203641.5246b692@pascal.spore.ath.cx> <47CA2D41.6030003@paradise.net.nz> <47CA323A.1080403@paradise.net.nz> Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <47CA323A.1080403@paradise.net.nz> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.16 (2007-06-09) X-Archives-Salt: 7af632f3-5445-4638-910f-e11ab98763f6 X-Archives-Hash: 55b3af8ce1cca3ae9328c0ddeb4cf3ed On Sun, Mar 02, 2008 at 05:51:06PM +1300, Mark Kirkwood wrote: > I wrote: >> >> >> If you want to back the system up while it is running (in particular /), >> then you need to use a tool that understands how to create a backup image >> that is valid (i.e will boot) - something like xfsdump, *dumpe2fs* etc or >> smart tar/dump based tools like Amanda. > Hmm - dunno what I was thinking there - 'dumpe2fs' is completely wrong, > should have written 'dump', sorry! If you do backup live filesystems/data then dump is on par with dd; both read from the underlying device and might bypass the kernel's page cache. Ie., there might be unwritten data cached thats not on disk yet. Tar/rdiff-backup/etc reads through the pagecache and avoids this problem. The dump people talk a bit about this themselves on http://dump.sourceforge.net/isdumpdeprecated.html Note I dont want to dis dump, backing up live filesystems is just tricky (depending on your consistency requirements :) and dump adds another level to that. Cheers, Rasmus -- gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list