RE: xfsdump/xfsrestore question

Leon Kolchinsky
2007-02-21T21:03:00Z

>
> ># xfsdump -f /data/backup.file /
> >
> > Is it right?
> > What about opened and "currently in use by the system" files? Are they
> > backuped in a proper way? What about tmpfs like /proc, are they been
> > ignored?
> >
>
> Yes, the dump line looks reasonable (since /data is a different
> filesystem).
> As Justin mentioned the dump wants a couple of ids (session-id, media-id)
> which
> will be prompted for or you can specify then as command arguments.
> >From the file xfsdump/doc/README.xfsdump:
> 1. Dumping a filesystem to a dump file:
> xfsdump -f dump_file -L session_label -M media_label file_system
> e.g. xfsdump -f ./mydump -L 'session1' -M 'media1" /mnt/xfs0
> Yes it is meant to handle a changing filesystem - you do see warning msgs
> sometimes because
> it can't see a particular inode anymore, which can happen as we do
> multiple
> scans of the inodes and if they get deleted then it obviously can't do
> anything
> with it anymore or if the inode is reused as a dir instead of a reg-file
> etc...
> It won't dump out foreign filesystems mounted under / because it doesn't
> actually do a directory walk to dump data but actually iterates through
> all the inodes of the filesystem (using an xfs ioctl called bulkstat) (and
> for a directory inode it will just dump out the dirents).
> It won't dump out /var/lib/xfsdump which contains the dump inventory which
> is
> used for info for incremental dumps and resumed dumps.
>
> > 2) If I'd have to restore my system from the dump, how would you
> recommend
> > to do it? Booting from LiveCD and making # xfsrestore -f /
> data/backup.file
> > / ?
> >
> Booting from a filesystem other than the one your are restoring to - yes:)
>
> > Would it be a bootable/operational system?
> Should be.
> (Try it out:)
>
> --Tim
>

Thanks Justin,Timothy,

It's clearing things out :)

You right, man pages say that xfsdump can only dump XFS filesystems, so I
don't worry about procfs now :)

So,my backup command would look like this:
xfsdump -L 'session1' -M 'media1" -f /data/sysbackup.file /

But if I want to make an incremental backup now, should I use this command?
xfsdump -l 1 -f /data/sysbackup.file /

What incremental filename would be created in this case?
Is the syntax right?

Sorry, but man pages a little unclear for me on this issue and there is
almost no examples showing xfsdump usage on the net :(

Best Regards,
Leon Kolchinsky