Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2017 22:59:33 +1000 (EST) From: Ian Smith <smithi@nimnet.asn.au> To: Manish Jain <bourne.identity@hotmail.com> Cc: Matt Smith <matt.xtaz@gmail.com>, Warren Block <wblock@wonkity.com>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Anything specific to keep in mind restoring from rsync ? (Re: Any reason to prefer 11.1 over 10.3 ?) Message-ID: <20170818221842.I98697@sola.nimnet.asn.au> In-Reply-To: <mailman.87.1503057602.63147.freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> References: <mailman.87.1503057602.63147.freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
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In freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 689, Issue 5, Message: 14 On Fri, 18 Aug 2017 10:07:35 +0000 Manish Jain <bourne.identity@hotmail.com> wrote: > On 08/18/17 13:19, Matt Smith wrote: > > On Aug 18 07:35, Manish Jain wrote: > >> Hi, > >> > >> I am going to have to install FreeBSD again on a box on which 10.3R > >> works well. Is there any reason I should prefer 11.1R ? > >> > >> Thanks for any tips. > >> Manish Jain > > > > The main reason for 11.1 would be the expected end of life date when > > 10.3 will no longer be supported. As you can see from > > https://www.freebsd.org/security/security.html#sup that is April 30, > > 2018 whereas 11.1 will be 3 months after the release of 11.2. I see that 10.4 is due out in October. Unlikely to be an extended type release, but I expect it will still use the old release model, so should be good for a year or so .. but if anyone knows better, please say. > > Obviously you can upgrade from 10.3 to 10.4, or from 10.3 to 11.2, and > > from 11.1 to 11.2 quite easily, but it's easier to start with 11 than it > > is to start with 10 and do a major version upgrade. > > > > Unless there are any strange issues particular to your hardware 10 and > > 11 should work identically really. > > > > Hi Matt/Others, > > I decided that a fresh install would be too much effort considering the > ease of rsync to back up existing data. rsync is great for 'user data', but I'm not sure whether it handles hard links properly, which you'll want for system directories at least. Do you have some reason not to use the canonical dump(8) and restore(8)? I see you're using the Linux-style 'all on /' approach, but dump(8) only backs up used blocks and you can compress the output and pipe that back into restore(8): see the handbook and/or wonkity.com for good recipes. > The primary reason I am in the current muddle is that the / partition > has to be made bigger ( 30G -> 40G ). What I have done is rsynced (with > some exclusions) / to /mnt/backup > > I have actually never restored data with rsync earlier. Precisely what > should I be doing to return copy out /mnt/backup over / ? > > This is what I actually intend : if anyone spots something stupid, > please chime in now : - ) > > 1) Install 10.3 again on the larger root partition > > 2) Reboot with the optical media and drop into a fixit shell > > 3) Mount the intended slash at /tmp and the partition holding the > rsynced backup at /mnt If you're going with rsync, I strongly suggest not using /tmp; all sorts of things may use that for, well, temporary files during the operation. Better perhaps using /media, /dist or some directory you make: /mnt2 ? > 4) rsync from /mnt to /tmp Or restore(8) from a dump on say /mnt to (eg) /mnt2 .. but then what? > Is the above a decent approach ? > > Thanks for any insight/suggestions. There are many ways :) I've always done well with dump/restore on UFS - though I'm only assuming you're using UFS? ZFS needs a different story. cheers, Ian
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