Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2009 18:25:28 +0200 From: Roland Smith <rsmith@xs4all.nl> To: Jay Hall <jhall@socket.net> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Backup Size Message-ID: <20090810162528.GA49364@slackbox.xs4all.nl> In-Reply-To: <6206A242-7226-48E3-8D09-A1D3A651F2A8@socket.net> References: <6206A242-7226-48E3-8D09-A1D3A651F2A8@socket.net>
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On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 10:21:58AM -0500, Jay Hall wrote:
> I am sure there is an easy explanation for this, but I cannot find it.
>=20
> I am backing up my /etc directory using the following command.
>=20
> tar -cvf - /etc | dd of=3D/dev/nsa1 obs=3D10240
Why are you using dd? Tar was originally built to write to tape:
tar -cvf /dev/nsa1 /etc
> When the command completes, I receive the following message.
>=20
> 3080+0 records in
> 154+0 records out
> 1576960 bytes transferred in 0.179921 secs (8764740 bytes/sec)
>=20
> What concerns me is when running du -h /etc, the size of the folder is =
=20
> reported as 1.7M.
du rounds sizes up to the filesystem block size, which is 512 bytes by
default. So you'll bound to see differences. And see below.
=20
> Is the number of bytes written to the tape less than the reported size =
=20
> of the directory because of the way the files are written to the =20
> tape? If so, how can the amount of space used be calculated?
=20
The fact that you are using tar also plays a part. Tar has some overhead to
store information about the files it contains.
If you want to know the total size of all files:
find /etc -type f -ls | awk \
'BEGIN {t=3D0; c=3D0}; END {print t " bytes in " c " files"}; {t=3Dt+$7; c+=
+}'
This returns '1320254 bytes in 362 files' in my case, while the tar/dd combo
returns 1617920 bytes. The difference is the overhead for tar.
If you really want to check if tar does the right thing, restore the backup=
to
a different place (e.g. /tmp/etc) and check with diff:
# rewind your tape to the correct position (not shown)
cd /tmp; tar xvf /dev/nsa1
diff -ru /etc /tmp/etc
The diff command should give no output.
Roland
--=20
R.F.Smith http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
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