[plug] Backups

[Nick Bannon]

On Tue, Jul 27, 2004 at 04:04:26PM +0800, Marc Wiriadisastra wrote:
> I've just been doing heaps of reading up and the majority of people are 
> saying don't use tar because as its getting fed through programs such as 
> tar and cpio it alters file systems if they are mounted as read write.  
> The people at the dump web site are saying that dump does not alter file 
[...]

By default, most UNIX filesystems record when each file was last
accessed. If that's always "last night, by the backup script", that's
not as useful. Any program that reads the files on disc will do that
though, it's not a big deal except to say that dump sidesteps it by
reading the filesystem directly.

You can "mount -o remount,noatime /", then "mount -o remount,atime /" to
disable it temporarily, if you like, but it may not be important to you.

[...]
> granted its not used constantly and I'm not worried about but its just a 
> situation where I don't want to lose data and the just in case a 
> murphy's stupid laws is what concerns me.

The only way you can have some peace of mind there is, every so often,
to pretend that you've just lost your hard disc and to test a restore
using only your backup copy.

Nick.

-- 
   Nick Bannon   | "I made this letter longer than usual because
nick-sig at rcpt.to | I lack the time to make it shorter." - Pascal