Re: dump fails with bread and lseek trouble

2001-12-15 Thread Christoph Scheeder

Hi,
This pops up every few weeks here on the list, its very simple:
you are backing up an active filesystem with a tool designed primary for 
backing up filesystems mounted read-only.
what happens is: 
dump first reads in the directory and filepositions on the disk(Pass I and II)
then in pass III  it reads from these stored places the information contained
in these dirs and files.
Now between mapping dirs and dumping a file was deleted or something and the 
corresponding blocks where freed and reused for another file.
at this point dump thinks the block contains structural information, 
but in reality it contains data. so dump interprets more or less random data as 
block and sector-adresses. these adresses will most likely be rubish and way out 
of the limits of the disk. the result are the seek-errors you see.
At this seems not too problematic, only the corresponding file should be 
rubish in your dump.
But if you are unlucky these errors lead to completly unusable dumps.

This had been widely discussed earlier this year, if you are interested 
in more details, read the archives. The topic why it came up was linux-dump 
and linus thorvalds advise not to use it with kernels  2.4.x.
have a nice day 
Christoph 

Paul Lussier schrieb:
 
 In a message dated: Fri, 14 Dec 2001 09:29:54 GMT
 Thomas Robinson said:
 
 Hi,
 
 Has anyone seen or hear of this problem.
 
 Ayup, I get it all the time.  I have no idea what the problem is
 though.  It seems to come and go sporatically.
 
 I've run e2fsck -c /dev/sda5 to no avail. I also upgraded the dump utility tha
 t came with the standard Red Hat 7.1 install to dump-04b21 to dump-04b22. Any
 ideas what can cause this and how I might fix it?
 
 No, but if anyone has any ideas, please post them to the list, I'll
 try anything :)
 
 Thanks,
 --
 
 Seeya,
 Paul
 
 
   God Bless America!
 
 ...we don't need to be perfect to be the best around,
 and we never stop trying to be better.
Tom Clancy, The Bear and The Dragon



Status of the amanda-win32 project?

2001-12-15 Thread Colin Smith


Saw it on Sourceforge:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/amanda-win32/

Anyone tried it?

-- 
|Colin Smith:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  |




RE: [Amanda-users] Amanda+Samba : exclude setting

2001-12-15 Thread Phil Cooper


Trying to use a STT2A with nht0 was a DISASTER!  amlabel could write
labels, but not read them, so I couldn't even get started with amdump.
Worse, attempts to run amdump or amlabel caused the machine to freeze
completely on occasion, requiring a power-cycle reboot...

No such problems with nst0...

-Original Message-
From: Jason Thomas [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 15 December 2001 03:17
To: Philip Cooper
Cc: amanda-users
Subject: Re: [Amanda-users] Amanda+Samba : exclude setting


On Fri, Dec 14, 2001 at 07:01:36PM -, Philip Cooper wrote:
 It seems to work fine, once I realised you had to enable the ide-scsi
kernel
 module and use /dev/nst0 instead of /dev/nht0... (this would be a good
 addition to the FAQ).

why would this matter, aren't they both block devices?




Re: dump fails with bread and lseek trouble

2001-12-15 Thread Greg A. Woods

[ On Saturday, December 15, 2001 at 12:40:56 (+0100), Christoph Scheeder wrote: ]
 Subject: Re: dump fails with bread and lseek trouble

 This pops up every few weeks here on the list, its very simple:
 you are backing up an active filesystem with a tool designed primary for 
 backing up filesystems mounted read-only.

or not mounted at all!  ;-)

-- 
Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098;  [EMAIL PROTECTED];  [EMAIL PROTECTED];  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Planix, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED]; VE3TCP; Secrets of the Weird [EMAIL PROTECTED]



Re: dump fails with bread and lseek trouble

2001-12-15 Thread Dan Wilder

On Sat, Dec 15, 2001 at 11:10:41AM -0500, Greg A. Woods wrote:
 [ On Saturday, December 15, 2001 at 12:40:56 (+0100), Christoph Scheeder wrote: ]
  Subject: Re: dump fails with bread and lseek trouble
 
  This pops up every few weeks here on the list, its very simple:
  you are backing up an active filesystem with a tool designed primary for 
  backing up filesystems mounted read-only.
 
 or not mounted at all!  ;-)

Hi, Greg!

Not that my own favorite, tar, necessarily does any better in the
sense of being guaranteed to always preserve completely consistent
data from an active filesystem.  If I make corresponding changes in 
files a and b  during backup, but backup grabs a before the
change and b after, my restore won't get back quite what I want.

But, since it doesn't attempt to descend inside the filesystem's
data structures, but only uses the user-eye view of what's there,
it won't produce quite so many threatening messages.

Bottom line is that it is difficult to make a good picture
with a slow shutter of something that's moving fast.  It's up
to the admin to decide, case-by-case, when the picture is
good enough.

-- 
-
 Dan Wilder [EMAIL PROTECTED]   Technical Manager  Editor
 SSC, Inc. P.O. Box 55549   Phone:  206-782-8808
 Seattle, WA  98155-0549URL http://embedded.linuxjournal.com/
-