From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jun 7 23:16:37 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C7451106566C for ; Thu, 7 Jun 2012 23:16:37 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from wblock@wonkity.com) Received: from wonkity.com (wonkity.com [67.158.26.137]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8596E8FC15 for ; Thu, 7 Jun 2012 23:16:37 +0000 (UTC) Received: from wonkity.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by wonkity.com (8.14.5/8.14.5) with ESMTP id q57NGY0g056608; Thu, 7 Jun 2012 17:16:34 -0600 (MDT) (envelope-from wblock@wonkity.com) Received: from localhost (wblock@localhost) by wonkity.com (8.14.5/8.14.5/Submit) with ESMTP id q57NGYE9056605; Thu, 7 Jun 2012 17:16:34 -0600 (MDT) (envelope-from wblock@wonkity.com) Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2012 17:16:34 -0600 (MDT) From: Warren Block To: Gary Aitken In-Reply-To: <4FD1098E.7020203@dreamchaser.org> Message-ID: References: <4FD1098E.7020203@dreamchaser.org> User-Agent: Alpine 2.00 (BSF 1167 2008-08-23) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed X-Greylist: Sender IP whitelisted, not delayed by milter-greylist-4.2.7 (wonkity.com [127.0.0.1]); Thu, 07 Jun 2012 17:16:34 -0600 (MDT) Cc: FreeBSD Mailing List Subject: Re: dumping file system subtree (/var) X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 07 Jun 2012 23:16:37 -0000 On Thu, 7 Jun 2012, Gary Aitken wrote: > When I originally set up my SSD, the stuff I was following indicated > there was no need to put anythng on a separate filesystem. I'm now > trying to build a backup system on a usb drive and I want a separate > /var and /tmp. > > I had originally set the nodump flag on /tmp and /var, so my snapshot > is empty for those. There are several things in /var that are worth keeping, and they are pretty small. > I don't think there's any reason to preserve /tmp, but is there any > good way to copy /var from the running system on the SSD to another > filesystem (and still preserve everything, including flags)? My > impression is both mksnap_ffs and dump should only be used on a > complete filesystem, not a subtree. > > Or do I need to unset the nodump flag on /var, make a snapshot of /, > take a dump :-), and then split the /var out upon restore? Snapshots don't have to be made separately, dump's -L option does that automatically: http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/backup.html Restoring from a dumpfile is an easy way. net/rsync has a config option to support flags, but I haven't tried it. > And would it be wise to repartition the SSD to put /var and /tmp on > their own partitions? When I did that recently, I put /var on a small separate partition but used tmpfs(5) for /tmp.