On 25 Jan 2002 at 10:37pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote > My experience with tar (and perhaps things have changed with gnutar) is > that is is not as judicious as dump when it comes to a complete > restore. Things like block devices, modes, ownership and so on were not > always restored exactly. > > Has this changed? That is, in the event of a disk crash, can one > restore a complete file-system exactly as it was before the crash using > gnutar (including file-systems with /dev fifo's and so on)? > > I have always had a good experience doing this with dump, but > historically tar did not get it exactly right.
tar will definitely get the data, modes, and ownership right. Things aren't going to be on the same inode (as they would be with dump), and I'm not sure about stuff like /dev -- it probably won't get that right. But, for my needs, all I care about *is* the data, modes, and ownership. All I back up is user data (for obvious reasons), config files (for reinstalls should a whole disk go), and logs (for security). With kickstart and a local distro mirror, I can have a system (re)installed and fully configured in <30 minutes (plus however long it takes to put the user data back). For me, that's quicker and easier than restoring the entire OS from tape. YMMV, of course. But that's my philosophy when it comes to Linux clients. -- Joshua Baker-LePain Department of Biomedical Engineering Duke University
