Looking for backup software of complete system

[Mike Noble]

Randy Kelsoe wrote:
> Mike Noble wrote:
> 
>> I just used dump to move the OS from one partition to another
>> one and it worked just fine.  Now I will say that this was
>> done with Mandrake Linux dump, but dump should be the same
>> for either Mandrake, Fedora, debian....).
>>
>> Mike
> 
> 
> Here is what Linus said about dump back in April of 2001:
> 
> "...Note that dump simply won't work reliably at all even in 2.4.x: the
> buffer cache and the page cache (where all the actual data is) are not
> coherent. This is only going to get even worse in 2.5.x, when the
> directories are moved into the page cache as well.
> 
> So anybody who depends on "dump" getting backups right is already playing
> russian rulette with their backups. It's not at all guaranteed to get the
> right results - you may end up having stale data in the buffer cache that
> ends up being "backed up"......
> 
> Right now, the cpio/tar/xxx solutions are definitely the best ones, and
> will work on multiple filesystems (another limitation of "dump"). Whatever
> problems they have, they are still better than the _guaranteed_(*)  data
> corruptions of "dump".
> 
> However, it may be that in the long run it would be advantageous to have a
> "filesystem maintenance interface" for doing things like backups and
> defragmentation.."
> 
>         Linus
> 
> That was 3 and a half years ago, so things may have changed. I would 
> hope so, since dump is still part of the distro.
> 
> 
> 
I am glad that you mentioned this, I really do not know if
this has gotten better or not.  I will have to look into this
further.

Mike

-- 
Usenix member  http://www.usenix.org
Sage member    http://www.sage.org
Registered Linux User #362275	http://counter.li.org