Risks of backing up live mounted filesystems using dump(8)

[Cameron Simpson]

On 01Mar2010 21:30, Mike McCarty <Mike.McCarty at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
| Jeff Metcalf wrote:
| > <alan at lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:
| > Isn't dump(8) considered a filesystem based backup?  Are you refering to something more specialized?
| 
| Yes, it is. I suspect he meant a files based backup. With
| dump, what one gets is a dump of the file system itself,
| as opposed to the data it contains. With a files based
| backup, one gets a copy of the data saved, but not the
| file system. So, for example, using tar, or cpio, one can
| back up a system using ext3, and recover to a system which
| uses reiserfs. One cannot do that with dump and restore,
| which store the file system itself. The dump and restore
| work at a lower level than files based backup.

I was pretty sure restore pulls "files" from the dump and writes to an
arbitrary filesystem (eg xfs or reiser etc). Dump accesses the filesystem
directly, but restore doesn't have that issue.
-- 
Cameron Simpson <cs at zip.com.au> DoD#743
http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/

SGI's are like F18's.
SUN's are like F16's.
Mac's are like Cessna 150's.
PC's .... Well....PC's are like a bumble bee with only one wing.
        - Kip J. Mussatt <hampster at matt.ksu.ksu.edu>