dump_snapshot file

[Warren Block]

On Wed, 7 Oct 2009, Philip Jocks wrote:

> I had a file /usr/.snap/dump_snapshot being about 15GB in size, which I 
> removed because the partition was filling up.
> The file's date was always rather current, so I'm wondering, what it was for?
> I did do a level 0 dump with -0 and -Lau parameters a few weeks ago and 
> always do dumps on other boxes, but never saw a file in the .snap directory 
> growing. For the other partitions, there are no such files, that's why I'm 
> wondering.
> Maybe someone can shed some light on this for me.

man -P 'less +/-L' dump

explains it a bit.  The snapshot file is supposed to go away after dump 
completes, but in your case dump died or was killed before it unlinked 
the file.

On small filesystems, -L is quick enough to not make a noticeable 
difference.  /usr can be huge, and there's a long pause while it makes 
that snapshot and doesn't seem to be doing anything useful.

-Warren Block * Rapid City, South Dakota USA