Dump and filesystem types

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Sat, 2010-04-17 at 17:07 -0600, Chris Kottaridis wrote:
> I am about to upgrade from Fedora Core 8 to Fedora Core 12. I typically
> do this by dumping the partitions into a file on another host and doing
> a completely new installation. Then use restore interactively to pull in
> the things I need.
> 
> I've seen various postings that dump only works on ext3 file systems and
> not ext4. Now I happen to have ext3 on my Fedora Core 8 machine so I
> assume I can dump OK.
> 
> Now will Fedora Core 12 default to ext4 file systems ?
> 
> I assume, if I do use ext4 file systems,  the restore command will still
> be able to read the old ext3 dump file and restore the files into the
> ext4 file system with no problem.
> 
> Also, if I go with ext4 on Fedora Core 12 what backup command is
> available ?
> 
> I've only ever used dump (with amanda), I actually haven't been backing
> up this Fedora Core 8 machine because I considered it expendable and was
> willing to loose any data. However, I have collected some data that I'd
> prefer not to lose if I don't have to lose it. But, after I get Fedora
> Core 12 I am going to really use it and will want to back it up
> aggressively.

Just use tar. Dump/restore is designed for fast backup and restoring of
filesystem images. Among other things, this ties you to a specific
filesystem type and partition size. Tar is more flexible and doesn't
care what the filesystem is (within reason).

poc