From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Sep 10 16:27:38 2007 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@FreeBSD.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1B76916A469 for ; Mon, 10 Sep 2007 16:27:38 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from mwm@mired.org) Received: from mired.org (vpn.mired.org [66.92.153.74]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 78F4713C483 for ; Mon, 10 Sep 2007 16:27:37 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from mwm@mired.org) Received: (qmail 76385 invoked from network); 10 Sep 2007 15:59:58 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mbook.mired.org) (192.168.195.2) by 0 with SMTP; 10 Sep 2007 15:59:58 -0000 Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2007 12:00:39 -0400 From: Mike Meyer To: Markus Hitter Message-ID: <20070910120039.3fc3917e@mbook.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <74423CD8-F9C1-454D-83BB-0114402C2CCC@jump-ing.de> References: <20070904233246.GA2409@epia-2.farid-hajji.net> <043a01c7f202$a7ad0920$f7071b60$@co.uk> <046801c7f229$a4534510$ecf9cf30$@co.uk> <74423CD8-F9C1-454D-83BB-0114402C2CCC@jump-ing.de> Organization: Meyer Consulting X-Mailer: Claws Mail 2.10.0 (GTK+ 2.6.10; i386-apple-darwin8.10.1) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailman-Approved-At: Fri, 14 Sep 2007 11:00:11 +0000 Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.org, 'cpghost' , 'Gavin, freebsd-current@FreeBSD.org, Atkinson' Subject: Re: dump problems X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2007 16:27:38 -0000 On Mon, 10 Sep 2007 14:14:00 +0200 Markus Hitter wrote: > Am 10.09.2007 um 10:14 schrieb Danny Braniss: > > so here are some questions: > > - is the readers/writer split realy needed now? my guess it was > > put in in the old days to get tapes streaming - which is > > btw, > > what's not working. > Before you put a lot of efforts into this: Why don't you just let > dump/restore die and put functionality, which is needed and unique to > dump, into tar? Because doing that would require rewriting tar pretty much from the ground up? > Tar is far more popular, today's world is multiplatform, today's > world is multi-filesystem and if you rewrite dump, you force admins > to rewrite their scripts anyways. Tar is an excellent tool for moving data between platforms and file systems. It's not a good tool for backing up a file system. Fixing dump won't necessarily require admins to fix their scripts - it's been done more than once in the past. > I've always considered it as sub-optimal to have several tools for > one task. Just because multiple tools can perform task doesn't mean you have multiple tools for that task. I.e. - you can convince cat, cp, tar, sed, awk, rsync, and a host of others can copy a file. Which one you use depends on what you're trying to do. There's only one tool that can be used to reliably back up and restore a file system - and that's dump. Tar, cpio, GNU cp, etc. can be used to do the job, but they don't always get it right. In particular, none of them will correctly reproduce holes in files. dump will. Symlinks, special files, and similar things all cause some of the others to do odd things - exactly which ones and exactly what odd things varying depending on what you're looking at and the version of the other thing. http://www.mired.org/consulting.html Independent Network/Unix/Perforce consultant, email for more information.