On Mon, Jun 06, 2011 at 06:25:29PM +1000, Rick Phillips wrote:
> You will see from the
> script below that I have listed a number of folders which I need to back
> up (literally the whole drive) with a few things like /tmp and /proc
> missing for obvious reasons.  When I do a "list" of the files on the
> tape at the completion of the backup, it only ever displays as far as
> the "sys" folder with nothing after it (/var & /virtual).

You need to exclude /sys for the same reason you exclude /proc - it is
a filesystem constructed from kernel memory, not disk blocks. The list
is maybe hanging in /sys because it's treating them like regular files
(e.g. if you try to backup /dev/zero it will read zeroes forever and
never complete).

Look for an option to limit a backup within the specified filesystem, or
not cross filesystem boundaries. In tar, the appropriate option is 
--one-file-system.
In other system tools the option may also be called -x or -xdev.

Oh, and using amanda or bacula will have benefits such as incremental
dumps or multiple filesystems.

Nick.
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