On Thu, 2004-01-01 at 19:37, Collins wrote: > On Thu, 01 Jan 2004 14:23:10 -0500 > "Lincoln A. Baxter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On Thu, 2004-01-01 at 14:13, Collins wrote: > > > On Thu, 1 Jan 2004 13:51:50 -0500 > > > Jerry McBride <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > > > On Thursday 01 January 2004 01:34 am, Ben Munat wrote: > > > > > Just wanted to follow up in case anyone was wondering. > > > > > > > > > > > [ snipped ] > > > > > > > > Call me OLD FASHION, but devfs is the first thing I dump after > > > > installing gentoo on a new box. The steps I take are; recompile > > > > the kernel without devfs support, add "gentoo-nodevfs" to the > > > > append line in lilo.conf, correct any defvs associations iin > > > > lilo.con and fstab, run lilo, rc-update del devfs and then reboot. > > > > Once booted, move to/dev and run MAKEDEV. If you are running alsa, > > > > also run snddevices anad add in any symlinks you might need for > > > > various applicaitons... > > > > > > > > The thing I like least about devfs is that fact that one cannot make a > > working backup of a root partition. On has to do a difference root > > first. I have working around this by making backups (excluding the > > /dev directory, and then (from a LiveCD boot), making a tarball of > > /dev which I can restore into a /dev directory on the copy before I > > try to boot the copy. > > > > I'm not sure I understand. When I create a backup (done from init 1 > environment), I have a script that creates the / directory structure, > then copies(cp-a) each needed directory (obviously /tmp, /proc, etc. > aren't needed) including/dev. All I have to change is /etc/fstab and add > a new grub boot stanza to boot from the backup.
Ah, but you are doing from init 1 env. I used to do it from a system at init 3 or init 5 (prior to gentoo). With gentoo the result is un-bootable, because if you use tar's --one-file-system switch, it would stop at /dev (as expected), but in reality, there is stuff under there that devfs needs. Its kind of funky. In an init 1 env, it would find that stuff (assuming /dev had not been mounted). What I did, to work around the problem of wanting to take a backup, without droping to init 1 or booting a live CD, is Do once: 1 boot the live CD, 2 mount the root partition, 3 tar up the root partitions /dev directory. 4 save it in /root/ on the root partition. Now I can backup the root partition with out taking the system down. Cause I have a tarball of what /dev looks like before devfs is mounted on it. If I have to boot my backup root partition, i just unpack the /dev tarball before I try to boot it. It was a little painfull to have to figure out this busines with devfs as procedures I had used for years stopped working what I switched gentoo. Once I figured out this work around, everything is fine. Actually, I currenly do not use tar to backup partitions, rather, I use rsync, (first I take down services that need to be down (like oracle, mq series, qmail etc), in order to get a clean copy. Rsync keeps me with good image of each file system that is no more that 24 hours old. Disk space is cheap, time is not. While I can always restart from scratch, I'd much rather not. Lincoln -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
