[Gllug] couple of quick questions (USB stick and backups)

[Mike Brodbelt]

Richard Jones wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 25, 2006 at 07:00:08AM +0100, salsaman wrote:
> 
>>That's OK. I found the "dump" command. First you edit /etc/fstab, and in 
>>the fifth field you set either a 1 (dump) or 0 (no dump).
>>Then dump will exclude the filesystems marked with a 0.
> 
> 
> I think 'dump' is great. ...  Unfortunately Linus disagrees
> (http://lwn.net/2001/0503/a/lt-dump.php3) and he probably knows what
> he's talking about.  It's not possible to dump an ext2/3 filesystem
> without getting data corruption, unless the filesystem is entirely
> unmounted, in which case you might as well be using another backup
> method.

Backing up mounted filesystems with dump has been an ongoing sore point
for a long time. In practice, you'll get away with it the vast majority
of the time, but I'd question whether that's a good attitude to take for
backups.

If you want to use dump, (as I do), then you need to use a filesystem
that can guarantee reliable dumps - XFS does this, and I think the
existence of xfsdump/xfsrestore is a goog reason to use it. Pretty much
all my backups get done with xfsdump.

Mike

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