dump and :

[Lowell Gilbert]

bla at dayab.ch writes:

> just stumbled over this. If I try to do a dump to a file which has a ':'
> in its name or path, dump tries to connect to a server (which is 
> obvious as this is the notation for a remote dump).

Precisely.

> example: 
> # dump -f some:file /var
>   DUMP: rcmd: getaddrinfo: hostname nor servname provided, or not known
>   DUMP: login to some as root failed.
> 
> escaping (dump -f "some\:file" /var) does not work. 

Right; it's not the shell that you need to hide the colon from, so
escaping it in the shell syntax won't make any difference.

>                                                     Is this behaviour
> intended?

Yes; as you pointed out yourself, it's the notation for remote host
access. 

>           Is there a workaround? (besides making a symlink w/o the : in
> the name or using another filename/path)

I haven't tried this, but from looking at the man page, I might expect 

dump -f /path/to/dump/dir/some\:file

to work...

-- 
Lowell Gilbert, embedded/networking software engineer, Boston area: 
		resume/CV at http://be-well.ilk.org:8088/~lowell/resume/
		username/password "public"