*BSD News Article 57204


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From: dan@dna.neusc.bcm.tmc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: dump(1) just dumps entire partition?
Date: 14 Dec 1995 07:53:10 GMT
Organization: Baylor College of Medicine
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Message-ID: <4aol56$8li@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu>
References: <4ai90d$21m@mistral.toppoint.de>
Reply-To: dan@dna.neusc.bcm.tmc.edu
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In <4ai90d$21m@mistral.toppoint.de>, kai@mistral.toppoint.de (Kai Voigt) writes:
>So I question myself and you, is it just possible to
>dump an entire device or is there a way to specify
>a single directory?

	No, dump cannot dump a single directory. Dump works at one step below
the user-level filesystem interface, at the level of inodes. At this level,
a directory is just an inode, like any other file or device node.
	If you want to archive a single directory and/or work at the file level,
use tar or cpio or the like.

	Somewhat asymmetrically, restore does allow the restoration from dumps
of single files. This feature (actually a change in paradigm) was added
somewhat recently (circa FFS) for convenience (and better filesystem
consistency), as restore used to just restore inodes.