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Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 14:09:54 -0400
From: Andy Firman <andy@firman.us>
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	<200505061628.41006.ian@codepad.net>
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Subject: Re: dump/restore over ssh question
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On Fri, May 06, 2005 at 04:28:40PM +0100, Xian wrote:
> To restore the filesystems:
> Boot from a rescue disk and create the partitions of on the disk. I've never 
> smashed anything badly enough to need to work out how to do this. At least 
> the partitions were still there.

Well this is more complicated than it seems.  First of all, using the
fixit mode from 4.11-RELEASE-i386-disc2.iso and trying to use
disklabel -e does not work.  It gives this error:
disklabel:  /mnt2/stand/vi: No such file or directory
It turns out vi is located at /mnt2/usr/bin/vi and one has to set
EDITOR=/mnt2/usr/bin/vi for disklabel to work.  Is that a bug?
This also happens when I boot off disk1, enter fixit mode, and use
the live filesystem with disk2.

It is very easy to dump filesystems for backup, but it is not easy to
restore filesystems.  (I am trying to do this all over ssh...not tape)
It is probably just better, easier, faster, to backup all your
data and config files (rsync -e ssh -avp ...) and in case of disk failure, 
replace the disk, install fresh OS, then restore data and config files.  

What do you think?