Backing up a FreeBSD system

[Danny MacMillan]

On Mon, Oct 18, 2004 at 08:30:45AM -0600, Steven J Corso wrote:
> I would like to utilize dump to back up my filesystems on a FreeBSD
> machine.  I happen to be utilizing FreeBSD current at this time.
> 
> I would like to do this from single user state on the system.
> 
> ...

I don't know the answer to your question, however I think it would
be worth your while to investigate the -L option to dump.  From the
dump man page:

 -L      This option is to notify dump that it is dumping a live file sys-
         tem.  To obtain a consistent dump image, dump takes a snapshot of
         the file system in the .snap directory in the root of the
         filesystem being dumped and then does a dump of the snapshot.
         The snapshot is removed when the dump is complete.  If the .snap
         directory does not exist in the root of the filesystem being
         dumped, the dump will fail.  This problem can be corrected by
         creating a .snap directory in the root of the filesystem to be
         dumped; its owner should be root, its group should be operator,
         and its mode should be 0770.

I think this might achieve your goals without requiring the elaborate
scripted boot to single user mode.

-- 
Danny