From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Mar 5 16:00:30 2013 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [8.8.178.115]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2D4157CA for ; Tue, 5 Mar 2013 16:00:30 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from gkeramidas@gmail.com) Received: from mail-we0-x229.google.com (mail-we0-x229.google.com [IPv6:2a00:1450:400c:c03::229]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C04A7A75 for ; Tue, 5 Mar 2013 16:00:29 +0000 (UTC) Received: by mail-we0-f169.google.com with SMTP id t11so6557323wey.0 for ; Tue, 05 Mar 2013 08:00:29 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=x-received:sender:date:from:to:cc:subject:message-id:references :mime-version:content-type:content-disposition:in-reply-to; bh=kaIxC5WxMaqIKN2oI3204XQW3ErOhqcfKs2Tw456s4I=; b=CAlVxvbWo+rrQqD7v9wIf2CwIOOLRL6isexH4PfdNtgRW5rBkSfZhgAlmwc1UehM+9 w/ItikqbO5u329/F367+pGXRqK5ISPILnTmXvoPV014bdCZBGHQx3WFEEC4KCMzyqalG 4C0Vqfsg1EzuMTW5bqYDZsBYecg0Rb0gaw+AL8IzVaej+2MV/6VtDYqEfuj/cQt2+ag8 BhkWXHBW56LrNdbw21X0z88E9joByuJaMsVfhQTBh3i0D1lgI6/zXk3QUrJprNwFZ0Ed Gx5it8jiCtHf5JNKn2KZUgpMqzmzqjTP2dhw1Q5dPWxBd+d5DL3ZNaSqbgJov3PRs7H9 XzAQ== X-Received: by 10.194.123.130 with SMTP id ma2mr32316156wjb.46.1362499229032; Tue, 05 Mar 2013 08:00:29 -0800 (PST) Received: from saturn (217-162-217-29.dynamic.hispeed.ch. [217.162.217.29]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id k5sm23352391wiy.5.2013.03.05.08.00.26 (version=TLSv1.2 cipher=RC4-SHA bits=128/128); Tue, 05 Mar 2013 08:00:27 -0800 (PST) Sender: Giorgos Keramidas Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2013 17:00:23 +0100 From: Giorgos Keramidas To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Subject: Re: backups using rsync Message-ID: <20130305160021.GA9376@saturn> References: <6126.1362396930@server1.tristatelogic.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <6126.1362396930@server1.tristatelogic.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 05 Mar 2013 16:00:30 -0000 On 2013-03-04 03:35, "Ronald F. Guilmette" wrote: > As a result of this past Black Friday weekend, I now enjoy a true > abundance of disk space, for the first time in my life. > > I wanna make a full backup, on a weekly basis, of my main system's > shiny new 1TB drive onto another 1TB drive that I also picked up cheap > back on Black Friday. > > I've been planning to set this up for some long time now, but I've > only gotten 'round to working on it now. > > Now, unfortunately, I have just been bitten by the evil... and > apparently widely known (except to me)... ``You can't use dump(8) to > dump a journaled filesystem with soft updates'' bug-a-boo. > > Sigh. The best laid plans of mice and men... > > I _had_ planned on using dump/restore and making backups from live mounted > filesystems while the system was running. But I really don't want to have > to take the system down to single-user mode every week for a few hours while > I'm making my disk-to-disk backup. So now I'm looking at doing the backups > using rsync. Yes, this should be possible... One thing that can bite you when using rsync to traverse & copy large filesystems is that the filesystem may still be changing beneath rsync *as it's doing* the copy. If this is a UFS2 filesystem, it may be a good idea to snapshot the filesystem, and then rsync-backup the snapshot instead.