Anything specific to keep in mind restoring from rsync?

[Ian Smith]

On Sat, 19 Aug 2017 15:00:14 +0000, Manish Jain wrote:
 > 
 > On 08/19/17 20:08, Ian Smith wrote:
 > > However, despite not having used it myself - and still assuming UFS -
 > > this seems a model job for growfs(8).  The backup first is of course
 > > sensible, but by just resizing the partition with gpart and then using
 > > growfs, all that extra work should be obviated, if I'm reading it right.
 > 
 > Hi Ian/others,
 > 
 > That precisely was what I needed to do. Using MBR + UFS, I have :
 > 
 > ada0s1 - Linux 30 GB -> 20 GB
 > ada0s2 - FreeBSD 30 GB -> 40 GB
 > 
 > In effect the FreeBSD slice starts 10 GB to the left.

Ah, if I'd not ASSumed you were just increasing its size upwards, to the 
right if you prefer, I wouldn't have mentioned growfs at all.

 > But I was unsure whether growfs has the capability to expand the root 
 > filesystem in that manner (starting further to its left). So I just 
 > rsynced my data to a backup.

On the surface that'd seem difficult to impossible, as how would growfs 
find the original start of FS, apart from logistical difficulty (but not 
impossibility) of then shuffling blocks around to avoid clobbering 
unmoved data, however I skimmed the code and read its fairly detailed 
commentary, and finding no mention either way about such scenario I tend 
to conclude it's not mentioned because "who would even think you could 
do that!" .. but I've been wrong before, once or twice :)

 > Since the whole thing took just an hour or 2, I would not say there was 
 > any inconvenience I faced anywhere  : - )

Fair enough too, especially having to do it for the Linux partition 
also.  One of the only? useful things about msdosfs was that - after a 
defrag - you could reduce the size of a partition to where data ended, 
which in the olden days was often suggested to make room for FreeBSD.

cheers, Ian