From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri May 20 18:38:36 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C378C16A4CE for ; Fri, 20 May 2005 18:38:36 +0000 (GMT) Received: from postmaster.etv.net (postmaster.etv.net [208.14.190.176]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5011543DA5 for ; Fri, 20 May 2005 18:38:36 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from efinleywork@efinley.com) Received: from work.efinley.com ([205.161.203.55] helo=elliotdevelop) by postmaster.etv.net with smtp (Exim 4.50 (FreeBSD)) id 1DZCOE-000CeV-PT; Fri, 20 May 2005 12:38:30 -0600 Message-ID: <098801c55d6b$1eb66180$37cba1cd@emerytelcom.com> From: "Elliot Finley" To: "Andy Firman" , References: <20050506143453.GA65703@sockeye.firmanix.com><200505061628.41006.ian@codepad.net> <20050518180954.GA52537@sockeye.firmanix.com> Date: Fri, 20 May 2005 12:38:30 -0600 Organization: Emery Telcom MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1437 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1441 Subject: Re: dump/restore over ssh question X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list Reply-To: Elliot Finley List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 20 May 2005 18:38:36 -0000 From: "Andy Firman" > 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? Why not just create a bootable disk *as* your backup. That's what I do. I run it once a week and then also backup every night to a disk based backup server. If my system disk fails, I just need to but off of my backup disk and then restore my nightly backups.