On Wed, Mar 09, 2011 at 01:49:04AM +0100, Benny Lofgren wrote: > > I don't know about the rest of you guys, but to me that sounds exactly > like a bug... especially since nothing is mentioned of such behaviour in > the dump man page. >
Well, you would have to totally redo the guts of dump if you want to "fix" this well known behaviour. Dump scans and writes the meta-data first and then writes the data for the files. If you have ever used restore you would note that it builds the directory structure first and then puts the data back. Dump comes unstuck when the file system meta data changes during the backup - when files are added or deleted. The safest way to do a dump is when the machine is in single user mode for this very reason but many people play fast and loose because they cannot wear the outage for a backup, in that case you must quiesce the file systems as best you can. Really, this is well known unix sys admin procedure. Have a go at fixing it, by all means, but note that people _like_ the interactive restore mode where you can select the files to restore by browsing and would find it unacceptable to wait for a full tape scan before they can perform this task. It will be interesting to see how you go about handling files appearing and disappearing during the backup. -- Brett Lymn "Warning: The information contained in this email and any attached files is confidential to BAE Systems Australia. If you are not the intended recipient, any use, disclosure or copying of this email or any attachments is expressly prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please notify us immediately. VIRUS: Every care has been taken to ensure this email and its attachments are virus free, however, any loss or damage incurred in using this email is not the sender's responsibility. It is your responsibility to ensure virus checks are completed before installing any data sent in this email to your computer."
