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Date:      Thu, 25 Feb 1999 19:31:58 -0600
From:      David Kelly <dkelly@hiwaay.net>
To:        Langa Kentane <LKentane@mweb.com>
Cc:        "'freebsd-questions@freebsd.org'" <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: Backup question (newbie) 
Message-ID:  <199902260131.TAA52017@nospam.hiwaay.net>
In-Reply-To: Message from Langa Kentane <LKentane@mweb.com>  of "Thu, 25 Feb 1999 23:43:04 %2B0200." <913B8C252194D2119BD500805F3181789704FB@za12nt02.mweb.com> 

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Langa Kentane writes:
> Is there a way that I can backup my system to disks instead of tape since I
> don't have a tape drive.
> 
> I went to the FreeBSD Handbook and found no info there.
> 
> Can somebody please point me to a site where I can get info on this matter?

Ah, its not that hard. We just have to reprogram your brain a bit. One 
Of The Really Great Things About Un*x is that devices (such as your 
tape drive) behave very much like files. So all you have to do is name 
a file rather than a tape drive as the destination for your backup.

Make sure you don't name a file that is within the range you are 
backing up. The backup will loop until the filesystem is full.

Example: tar -cvzf /tmp/dkelly.tar.gz ~dkelly

The above writes a backup of my home directory to /tmp. The "z" option 
to tar causes gzip to be invoked to compress the file. So I named the 
file "dkelly.tar.gz" so I don't forget.

Same kind of thing applies to dump/restore too. Make sure you don't 
dump to the same filesystem you are backing up.

--
David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly@nospam.hiwaay.net
=====================================================================
The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its
capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system.




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