From owner-freebsd-questions Sun Jan 27 13:11:25 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from vms1.rit.edu (vms1.isc.rit.edu [129.21.3.8]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D6AFB37B419 for ; Sun, 27 Jan 2002 13:11:22 -0800 (PST) Received: from sonic.rit.edu ([129.21.10.175]) by ritvax.isc.rit.edu (PMDF V5.2-32 #40294) with ESMTPA id <01KDKLESN1UUE1PHE5@ritvax.isc.rit.edu> for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Sun, 27 Jan 2002 16:11:21 EST Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2002 16:10:58 -0500 From: Matt Penna Subject: dump, restore - active vs. inactive filesystem X-Sender: mdp1261@vmspop.isc.rit.edu To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Message-id: <5.1.0.14.2.20020127155139.026a3cb0@vmspop.isc.rit.edu> MIME-version: 1.0 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.1 Content-type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Dear folks, I've been trying various things with dump to familiarize myself with it. I successfully performed a level 0 dump of the filesystem I wanted to back up, but on restore I received errors stating that some of the files - actually many, many, many of them - were not found on the tapes. The filesystem in question was a 40GB vinum striped volume I use for serving files to Windows and Mac OSX clients via Samba, mounted on /mnt/mainvol. According to the restore man page, this was either a result of bad tape reads or the fact the dump was performed on an active filesystem. Now here's my question - is "active filesystem" a technical term that has a specific meaning? Or does it just refer to any filesystem that is in use? Neither the dump nor the restore man pages explain exactly what is meant by "active filesystem" or "inactive filesystem," and they don't seem to explain how to prevent this problem of files not actually being copied to tape. (Unless I'm missing it somewhere.) Does mounting a filesystem read-only mean it's inactive? (I suspect not.) What exactly needs to be done to a filesystem prior to a level 0 dump to ensure everything is backed up? In the dump man page, in the section where the Tower of Hanoi algorithm is explained, it is implied that subsequent, incremental backups can be performed on active filesystems without trouble. Any help would be appreciated. Unreliable backups are bad news and I want to make sure I understand what's going on. Thanks! Matt -- Matt Penna mdp1261@rit.edu ICQ: 399825 S0ba on AOLIM "The trouble with computers, of course, is that they're very sophisticated idiots." -Dr. Who To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message