--On Tuesday, September 27, 2005 16:07:32 -0700 Jerome Pioux <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi, > > I am surely doing something wrong but I have problems restoring symbolic > links. > Files that were symbolic links at backup time became empty file (0 size) > after the restore? > Backups were made using TAR (GNU tar 1.15.1). > Any idea please? Thank you. It sounds like the links are being restored (a link does have a size of 0), but you are wondering why what the link points to is not there. Tar (with the options Amanda calls it with) doesn't follow the link, it just archives the link itself (and doesn't cross filesystem boundaries either, nor does dump). If you backup /usr, and /usr/local is a link to /opt/local then all you will be backing up of /usr/local is the link itself. If you want what the link points to backed up, you need to make sure that whatever the link points to is either its own DLE or part of some other DLE. In my example it means you would have to backup both /usr and /opt/local, or perhaps just / if they are both on the same filesystem (and you don't care if you are backing up more than you need to). If you are wondering why tar isn't called with the option to follow links, it is because it would cause data to be backed up multiple times (once for the original and once for each link to it), and because it would make recovery fail, both from the increased size possibly not fitting on the disk and from the recovered filesystem not being the same layout as the original (could you find all the copies of a file if you needed to change it, and woul you want to have to?). Frank > > - Jerome > -- Frank Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sr. Systems Administrator Voice: 512-374-4673 Hoover's Online Fax: 512-374-4501
