continuous backup solution for FreeBSD

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 03:53:38PM +0300, Evren Yurtesen wrote:
> Mike Meyer wrote:
>> On Fri, 10 Oct 2008 02:34:28 +0300
>> yurtesen at ispro.net wrote:
>>
>>> Quoting "Oliver Fromme" <olli at lurza.secnetix.de>:
>>>
>>>> These features are readily available right now on FreeBSD.
>>>> You don't have to code anything.
>>> Well with 2 downsides,
>>
>> Once you actually try and implement these solutions, you'll see that
>> your "downsides" are largely figments of your imagination.
>
> So if it is my imagination, how can I actually convert UFS to ZFS  
> easily? Everybody seems to say that this is easy and that is easy.

It's not that easy.  I really don't know why people are telling you it
is.  Converting some filesystems are easier than others; /home (if you
create one) for example is generally easy:

1) ZFS fs is called foo/home, mounted as /mnt
2) fstat, ensure nothing is using /home -- if something is, shut it
   down or kill it
3) rsync or cpdup /home files to /mnt
4) umount /home
5) zfs set mountpoint=/home foo/home
6) Restart said processes or daemons

"See! It's like I said! EASY!"  You can do this with /var as well.

Now try /usr.  Hope you've got /rescue available, because once /usr/lib
and /usr/libexec disappear, you're in trouble.  Good luck doing this in
multi-user, too.

And finally, the root fs.  Whoever says "this is easy" is kidding
themselves; it's a pain.  You get to make a new filesystem called /boot,
and have all sorts of fun.  It's really not a snap-fingers-voila thing,
and I will gladly argue with anyone who thinks otherwise.  Is it do-able
though?  Yes.

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |