SOFTWARE-RAID-TIPS (was: Adaptec 7890 and RAID portIII RAID controller Linux Support)

[Beau James]

--> It's true that separate partitions help when you're using dump/restore 
--> for backups, but unfortunately dump/restore are a problematic pair for 
--> backups (especially on Linux).

Would you mind elaborating on both those points (why separate partitions
help backups, and why you consider dump/restore problematic)?

The only reason I can see that separate partitions help is that one might
choose to do incremental backups of slowly changing partitions (e.g. /usr)
more often, before doing a full backup.

With most reasonable-capacity tape drives these days, that seems like a
small win.

As to dump/restore: I've been using them for years with no problems,
but if there's a gotcha lurking out there, I'd like to know about it
before it bites me.

The only real complaint I have is that dump doesn't keep and restore
doesn't use a tape catalog that would enable rapid positioning to the
desired tape content, on a restore.  Since restores are relatively
infrequent events, I haven't found that too much of an issue, just a
minor inconvenience.

Beau


To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo at FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe aic7xxx" in the body of the message