You wrote (in your message from Mon 28)
 > How well does dump deal with active filesystems?  I haven't looked
 > into the source code, since I figure someone here can give me a quick
 > answer.

There's a very interesting paper about that from Steve Shumway (from
SunSoft) "Issues in on-line backup". It was published at LISA V, San
Diego September 1991. I think it's definitely worth reading.

It takes a look at the various problems that can arise during the two
phases of dump, and than show mechanism that can be used to build 
dump/restore programs that run safely on active filesystems.

I've made it available on ftp.laas.fr:/pub/NetBSD/papers/ along with
another from Elizabeth Zwicki: "Torture-testing backup and archive
programs: things you ought to know but probably would rather not".




					Matthieu

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