On Mon, May 31, 2004 at 09:14:16PM -0700, gen2 wrote: > > /dev/sda9 is NOT a mount point, its a descriptor only and will > > probably fail forever. > > > > now, if that disk is mounted someplace, as in /mnt/sda9 on the machine > > whose alias is node1, and it is mounted when amdump runs, it should > > work like a champ. > > Ok, what I'm experiencing lends that a lot of credence, but what sent me off > in this direction was (from the amanda distribution, example disklist > entries) > > # Dump Joe's NetBSD machine, with the mounted MS-DOS partition dumped > # using tar. > #joespc wd0a comp-root > #joespc wd0e comp-user > #joespc /msdos comp-user-tar > > which seems to imply that it's possible to back up unmounted partitions, and > that would be really great! I've always been under the impression that this > was amanda-possible somehow, but never have been able to make it happen. > > Seems like this would be the way to back up a partition regardless of > formatting (like an HFS+ or NT part, which is really what I'm after).
If the program you tell amanda to use for the backup is a version of tar, then it can only backup files and directories. That is a property of tar, not amanda. And of course, for there to be files and directories, the partition must be mounted. If instead you tell amanda to use a version of dump, those programs generally work at the device level (even when told to work on a mount point) and should be able to backup umounted partitions. -- Jon H. LaBadie [EMAIL PROTECTED] JG Computing 4455 Province Line Road (609) 252-0159 Princeton, NJ 08540-4322 (609) 683-7220 (fax)