weberdr@bellsouth.net said:
Ok your message prompted me to ask a few questions here. What do you consider to be the big danger in backing up a running system? I thought the great advantage (or one of them) of the ext2 filesystem is the ability to copy files that are in use by the system. If that is the case then where is the danger? Why can't you in the case of a major catastrophy do a basic install and then restore from tape?
Things can go wrong if data is being written and or files are being created during the backup. I'm assuming your talking about dump here. It does several passes before actually writing the partition data to whatever media you are using. During these passes it get directory, file and inode info. It uses this data to dump the partition. If you backup when the system is quiet you most likely will not have any problem. If there is a lot of write activity then the chances of having restore problems increase. I have backed up live file systems using dump for about 10 years (mainly Suns). The only time I had any problem was on a workstation where the user had a cron job which did a 'make clean; make' each night on a project with over 2GB of source, objects and executables. The user had been warned not to do this (it wasn't necessary) and when the disk died I couldn't restore it from the backup. I have successfully restored hundreds of times from dumps made on live systems with no problem. The rule is to do it regularly and when the system(s) are quietest. Regards, Roy -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/