>I keep seeing recommendations to use GNUTar rather than the native dump
>programs. ...
Not from me you don't :-).
>Can somebody give a quick pluses and minuses of going either way.
System dump/restore is highly OS (actually, file system format) dependent.
There is very little chance you could read a Solaris ufsdump format
image on a Linux box, for instance. GNU tar is portable and would be
readable anywhere.
System dump may (or may not) be faster than GNU tar. In theory, it should
be faster as it reads the raw disk in an optimized fashion. It is usually
(often significantly) faster when it comes to doing the estimates.
GNU tar alters the access time of everything it backs up. There may be
hacks around this, depending on your OS.
GNU tar may not have as many problems with active file systems as system
dump since it reads from the file system layer and anything changing
would be directly visible (e.g. in the buffer/page cache).
GNU tar does not store extended file attributes (e.g. ACL's). System dump
may or may not (depends on the OS and dump program).
> markh
John R. Jackson, Technical Software Specialist, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
