On 3 Dec 2002 at 9:39am, Carl D. Blake wrote > read/write. It needs to be a FAT partition because the user is using it > for running Windows 2000 via VMWare.
As an aside, I find that the following setup works *far* better: o Run VMware with a virtual drive that you don't back up, but of which you have a "virgin" image squirreled away somewhere. o Have users keep all their important files in their regular Linux $HOME dirs, which VMware can set itself up to access (they show up in "My Network Places" or whatever cutesy fsckin name Windows foists upon you). o Back up $HOME (obviously). This has the added advantage that when 'doze $hits all over itself, a "reinstall" is a quick 'cp' away. > Is there a problem with incremental backups on FAT partitions? I > searched with google and found some references to some problems, but no > real explanations or solutions. Can somebody explain what is going on > and how to work around the problem? I rather doubt that FAT has the notion of mtimes, which tar needs to do incrementals (I think). But I'm just making a WAG, really, b/c I wouldn't expect it to work. > Would one solution be to backup the partition with SAMBA rather than the > standard amanda client? According to the SAMBA document it should do > incremental backups. I don't think that'll work, since the filesystem that you're exporting is the problem. The more I think about it, the more I'd push you towards the solution proposed in my "aside" above. -- Joshua Baker-LePain Department of Biomedical Engineering Duke University
