From owner-freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Nov 26 12:32:33 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D898016A41F for ; Sat, 26 Nov 2005 12:32:33 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from rwatson@FreeBSD.org) Received: from cyrus.watson.org (cyrus.watson.org [209.31.154.42]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E81BF43D62 for ; Sat, 26 Nov 2005 12:32:28 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from rwatson@FreeBSD.org) Received: from fledge.watson.org (fledge.watson.org [209.31.154.41]) by cyrus.watson.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4A62A46B8F; Sat, 26 Nov 2005 07:32:26 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 12:32:26 +0000 (GMT) From: Robert Watson X-X-Sender: robert@fledge.watson.org To: Eric Anderson In-Reply-To: <437C776B.6000705@centtech.com> Message-ID: <20051126123044.B81764@fledge.watson.org> References: <57416b300511162006m4cfe53f8n6dc2bccb877a5567@mail.gmail.com> <437C776B.6000705@centtech.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Cc: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org, Peter Clutton , "mike@lanline.com" Subject: Re: Backup solutions X-BeenThere: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Internet Services Providers List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 12:32:34 -0000 On Thu, 17 Nov 2005, Eric Anderson wrote: >> FWIW, i have read that by far the best is dump, because of the way it >> deals with the raw data. No need to worry bout files with holes in them >> (with other backup tools, this could mean you may not be able to fit >> the file system back on after backup, if there are core files etc) I >> believe i read this in the O'Rielly text Unix Power Tools, but could be >> wrong. They also referenced an extensive test that was done by someone, >> and gave the link. I will post it if i find it. > > rsync handles sparse files just fine. The problem I've had with rsync is that it wants to build a list of all files to be backed up. On my cyrus server, I have file systems with >6m files. This causes rsync to core dump when it discovers it can't allocate memory to hold the entire list at once. Recently I've taken to backing up with dump -L, as the snapshot facility means recovery after a failure is a lot easier -- you no longer have to worry about the fact that the first file in a directory might be backed up at 10:00am, and the second at 2:00pm, causing applications to get very upset. Robert N M Watson