From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue May 10 21:01:54 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 94CF416A4CE for ; Tue, 10 May 2005 21:01:54 +0000 (GMT) Received: from harmony.digitalbluesky.net (dsl093-010-046.cle1.dsl.speakeasy.net [66.93.10.46]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 976E543D41 for ; Tue, 10 May 2005 21:01:53 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from steve@digitalbluesky.net) Received: (qmail 747 invoked by uid 0); 10 May 2005 21:02:13 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO FAITH.digitalbluesky.net) (steve@digitalbluesky.net@192.168.1.1) by harmony.digitalbluesky.net with SMTP; 10 May 2005 21:02:13 -0000 Message-Id: <6.2.1.2.0.20050510164801.02765818@mail.digitalbluesky.net> X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 6.2.1.2 Date: Tue, 10 May 2005 17:02:21 -0400 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org From: Steve Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Subject: proper use of dump to backup a 5.3 box X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 10 May 2005 21:01:54 -0000 This is a follow up to a question I posted not long ago about the best way to do a real, complete backup of a freebsd 5.3 box I'm using at home. I was looking at several options to do a complete backup so I could recover my server (this is used at home for personal and development purposes) in case of a hard drive failure or whatever. Originally I was leaning towards rsync'ing dumps to another older freebsd box I have at home but I just decided to put a 120 gig Western Digital USB drive on the server and backup to that instead of trying to do it over the network. So I have this FAT32 120 gig drive connected to my P4 FreeBSD box that has a 40 gig drive and it works great and everything. I created a /mnt/usbdrive directory for this drive and it's mounted successfully. In the /mnt/usbdrive directory I have two subdirectories: /mnt/usbdrive/backups and /mnt/usbdrive/dumps. I am using the .../backups directory to do a daily backup of selected directories from the P4 box and I want to put my dumps from the in the .../dumps directory. I read the man page for dump but I'm still a little unsure of the proper way to use the command. Can someone suggest the best way to actually execute the dump? (what flags and options, etc). Sorry if this is n00bish I just want to do this right the first time. I think this is the syntax I should use the first time: # dump -0u -f /mnt/usbdrive/dumps / Will this dump the entire file system to the usbdrive? I want to do a dump once a month, what would the proper syntax be for doing an incremental dump? Steve