On Sat, 09 Oct 2004 15:10:51 -0500, Randy Kelsoe <randykel@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Mike Noble wrote: > > > I just used dump to move the OS from one partition to another > > one and it worked just fine. Now I will say that this was > > done with Mandrake Linux dump, but dump should be the same > > for either Mandrake, Fedora, debian....). > > > > Mike > > Here is what Linus said about dump back in April of 2001: > > "...Note that dump simply won't work reliably at all even in 2.4.x: the > buffer cache and the page cache (where all the actual data is) are not > coherent. This is only going to get even worse in 2.5.x, when the > directories are moved into the page cache as well. > > So anybody who depends on "dump" getting backups right is already playing > russian rulette with their backups. It's not at all guaranteed to get the > right results - you may end up having stale data in the buffer cache that > ends up being "backed up"...... > > Right now, the cpio/tar/xxx solutions are definitely the best ones, and > will work on multiple filesystems (another limitation of "dump"). Whatever > problems they have, they are still better than the _guaranteed_(*) data > corruptions of "dump". > > However, it may be that in the long run it would be advantageous to have a > "filesystem maintenance interface" for doing things like backups and > defragmentation.." > > Linus > > That was 3 and a half years ago, so things may have changed. I would hope so, since dump is still part of the distro. > > > > > -- > fedora-list mailing list > fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx > To unsubscribe: http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list > If your main concern is recovering from a hardware failure, consider RAID. I'm using the built in software RAID to mirror two same size drives from different manufacturers. The chances of both drives failing are slim. If one drive fails the system keeps right on chugging along, until I take it offline at my convenience to physically install a replacement disk. Then I boot up and it rebuilds the mirror in the background after the machine is up and running. Won't help if you write bad data to the disk, but on a stable system where you aren't installing a lot of new software and are careful to test updates then that's not really a concern.
