From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri May 29 17:17:45 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EEA2E1065704 for ; Fri, 29 May 2009 17:17:45 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from martin@dc.cis.okstate.edu) Received: from dc.cis.okstate.edu (dc.cis.okstate.edu [139.78.103.93]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C168D8FC0A for ; Fri, 29 May 2009 17:17:45 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from martin@dc.cis.okstate.edu) Received: from dc.cis.okstate.edu (localhost.cis.okstate.edu [127.0.0.1]) by dc.cis.okstate.edu (8.14.2/8.13.8) with ESMTP id n4THHXGA036429 for ; Fri, 29 May 2009 12:17:33 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from martin@dc.cis.okstate.edu) Message-Id: <200905291717.n4THHXGA036429@dc.cis.okstate.edu> to: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-ID: <36427.1243617453.1@dc.cis.okstate.edu> Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 12:17:33 -0500 From: Martin McCormick Subject: Re: Producing Bad Dumps X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 17:17:46 -0000 Jerry McAllister writes: > Probably you did not want the -x or -u, but instead wanted to do > cd /MOUNTED_EMPTY_PARTITION > restore -rf DUMPFILENAME That would be the ideal command. Per haps there is a better approach so I am all ears as the saying goes. I am trying to set up a procedure so that we can take another server, if necessary, format the drive with FreeBSD and then restore the contents of a dead server to this drive and have it ready to run. Of course, dd is great if both drives are the same size but usually, the only thing both servers have in common is they are both i86 systems and the goal is to try to get a platform with a melted hard drive or mother board back on line. The holy grail is a clone operation that can be documented so that a worker of reasonable knowledge can do it successfully. So, you need all the files, but they probably will not occupy a disk that looks like the original one. In that respect, tar does well but trashes special files like /dev > But, I am not sure because it is hard to understand why you chose -xu. The thought was that -u unlinks existing files so one could write the restore right over the minimal system that was there. -x was to extract / in order to get the entire root file system. Again, the idea is to recover a FreeBSD system as quickly as possible and get it back to the patch level and general operating conditions it was originally in before the hardware that supported it died. Again, many thanks.