Anyone read from the kernel.org newsgroup a message from Linus Torvald
about dump?
here is his message:
"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"."
"Dump was a stupid program in the first place. Leave it Behind"
He then finally notes:
(*) Dump may work fine for you a thousand times. But it _will_ fail under
the right circumstances. And there is nothing you can do about it.
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okay I've run dump THOUSANDS + 1 times, but have yet to have a problem
with Amanda and especially restores. It has saved my ass repeatedly,
especially when a hard disk has failed and everything has been running
from memory for days.
So please I need opinions. I've already rigged amanda to work with my
exabyte EZ17 drive. I don't think I can rig it anymore to work with Tar.
latz,
Tanniel Simonian
Programmer Analyst III
University of California Riverside, Libraries.
