From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Feb 25 17:32:27 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mail.HiWAAY.net (fly.HiWAAY.net [208.147.154.56]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1C9C514E62 for ; Thu, 25 Feb 1999 17:32:20 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from dkelly@nospam.hiwaay.net) Received: from nospam.hiwaay.net (tnt8-216-180-15-141.dialup.HiWAAY.net [216.180.15.141]) by mail.HiWAAY.net (8.9.1a/8.9.0) with ESMTP id TAA19687; Thu, 25 Feb 1999 19:32:02 -0600 (CST) Received: from nospam.hiwaay.net (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by nospam.hiwaay.net (8.9.2/8.9.2) with ESMTP id TAA52017; Thu, 25 Feb 1999 19:31:58 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from dkelly@nospam.hiwaay.net) Message-Id: <199902260131.TAA52017@nospam.hiwaay.net> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0.2 2/24/98 To: Langa Kentane Cc: "'freebsd-questions@freebsd.org'" From: David Kelly Subject: Re: Backup question (newbie) In-reply-to: Message from Langa Kentane of "Thu, 25 Feb 1999 23:43:04 +0200." <913B8C252194D2119BD500805F3181789704FB@za12nt02.mweb.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 19:31:58 -0600 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Langa Kentane writes: > Is there a way that I can backup my system to disks instead of tape since I > don't have a tape drive. > > I went to the FreeBSD Handbook and found no info there. > > Can somebody please point me to a site where I can get info on this matter? Ah, its not that hard. We just have to reprogram your brain a bit. One Of The Really Great Things About Un*x is that devices (such as your tape drive) behave very much like files. So all you have to do is name a file rather than a tape drive as the destination for your backup. Make sure you don't name a file that is within the range you are backing up. The backup will loop until the filesystem is full. Example: tar -cvzf /tmp/dkelly.tar.gz ~dkelly The above writes a backup of my home directory to /tmp. The "z" option to tar causes gzip to be invoked to compress the file. So I named the file "dkelly.tar.gz" so I don't forget. Same kind of thing applies to dump/restore too. Make sure you don't dump to the same filesystem you are backing up. -- David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly@nospam.hiwaay.net ===================================================================== The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message