backup

[Jerry McAllister]

> 
> We're currently doing a back up of a FreeBSD 4.9 (2) server by plugging a
> USB external drive in and then doing
> 
> cp /dev/ad0 /dev/da0
> 
> This takes about 30 hours, (USB 1).
> 
> Is this the best way to do it, or can someone suggest a better way.  We'd
> rather not have the server offline while we do it.

I would suggest using dump (and restore if you need something recovered)
if you can because cp may not preserve everything appropriately.

or dump | restore if you are trying to build the file system on to
the other disk.   

I wonder also about your choice of devices, but I don't know how you 
created them or mounted them.   Actually, I would use their mount names 
rather than devices anyway.  Or am I missing something here?

Using dump[/restore] won't speed anything up, but it would make sure 
it is usable later.

////jerry

> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Richard
>