This one time, at band camp, Penedo wrote: >On 13/11/06, Matthew Hannigan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >>Pretty much everything keeps symlinks, cpio, tar, dump. > > >Just taking this opportunity to try to satisfy my curiosity. > >I was wondering what's the state of dump(8) in the current world of multiple >file system types, a quick Google came up with the following at the top of >the list, it's dated circa 2002: > >"The ext2fs/ext3fs dump utility is officially declared deprecated by >Linus Torvalds..." > >http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/postfix/2002-07/0501.html > >Other links from Google point to dump format-dependency - you can't dump a >ext3fs filesystem and be able to restore it directly onto, say, an XFS or >JFS filesystem. > >Besides - is there any sense in using dump these days? It made sense back >when dump was much faster than tar/cpio by avoiding running namei on each >file and when large multi-user machines were taken down to single user mode >for a backup (I'm talking about the VAX/CCI and 4.2BSD days). But does it >make sense in today's context, with filesystem snapshots and always-on >desktops? > >I wouldn't consider this as an option but since you mentioned it I wonder if >there is a situation where it's justifiable to use it.
dump might be quicker than tar, and preserves the entire filesystem state (not just POSIX, for example, tar doesn't store POSIX ACLs, though star does). If you need to do a bare metal recovery, onto identical hardware, then dump may solve your needs -- though I admit, I never used it and tar always did good enough. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
