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Old 11th July 2008
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jbhappy jbhappy is offline
Real Name: Jeff
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mwotsch View Post
Questions are as follows:
1) What do I need to specify to be backed up? Does no argument need to be provided to backup the entire machine? Does "/" suffice? Do I need to specify the device name as in "/dev/ad0s1a"?
you'll need to invoke a 'dump' command for each filesystem. as far as specifying a filesystem goes, see dump(8):

Quote:
The file system to be dumped is specified by the argument filesystem as either its device-special file or its mount point (if that is in a standard entry in /etc/fstab).
Quote:
Originally Posted by mwotsch View Post
2) When the backup is written, will it be backed up as well and then recursively repeatedly backed up? How can I avoid that if I don't have an external device to write to? Does the option -L take care of that?
with a dump snapshot (-L or mksnap_ffs(8) + mdconfig(8)), you can probably dump to the filesystem you're backing up, though if you have room on the smaller filesystem for a dump of the larger filesystem, you should consider dumping one filesystem to a file on the other fs, move the dump file off the system, and then dump the other fs to a file on the first fs. but if you don't have an archive filesystem (one that holds backups but never gets backed up, whether on the same host or another), you will definitely back up your dump files unless you start doing something like shuffling all backup files off of the filesystem you're backing up.

if backup storage space is an issue, try "-f - | bzip2 > fs.dump.bz2" instead of "-f filename" to compress on-the-fly.
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