| dsmc fstat()s the file it is currently reading regularly and retries the
| dump as the changes, and gives up if it is updated too often. Not sure
| about the server side, and certainly not a useful option for sequential
| devices that you directly write on. Looks like a cache for the biggest
| file is necessary.
Which doesn't address the issue of data in files A, B and C, with
indices in X and Y. This only works if you flush and freeze all the
files at one time, making a perfect backup of one at a time results in
corruption if the database is busy.
My favorite example is usenet news on INN, a bunch of circular spools, a
linear history with two index files, 30-40k overview files, and all of
it changing with perhaps 3.5MB/sec data and 20-50/sec index writes. Far
better done with an application backup!
The point is, backups are hard, for many systems dump is optimal because
it's fast. After that I like cpio (-Hcrc) but that's personal
preference. All have fail cases on volatile data.
-- bill davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com> CTO, TMR Associates, Inc Doing interesting things with little computers since 1979. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/