Re: silent semantic changes with reiser4

Lee Revell
2004-08-27T18:44:29Z

On Fri, 2004-08-27 at 14:27, Hans Reiser wrote:
> Rik van Riel wrote:
> >On Fri, 27 Aug 2004, Hans Reiser wrote:
> >
> >>Why are you guys even considering going to any pain at all to distort
> >>semantics for the sake of backup? tar is easy, we'll fix it and send in
> >>a patch.
> >
> >Because not everybody uses tar. Quite a few people use a
> >network backup system, while others use duplicity, RPM uses
> >cpio internally and big companies tend to use proprietary
> >network backup suites.
> >
> >Breaking people's setup is something to worry about.
> >
> It is the tail that should not wag the dog. New semantics are going to
> break backups other than dd. We need a LOT of new semantics if we
> don't want to be inferior to Apple and MS.
>
> We should implement backup plugin methods though, so that we only have
> to break things once....

Every Linux shop I know of uses amanda anyway, which will not be
affected by these changes, as it uses dump/restore. restore will need
minor changes, I think dump might not have to be changed at all.

If your backup system can't easily handle these changes, that's a pretty
good indication that it's poorly designed.

Lee