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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!nntp.coast.net!zombie.ncsc.mil!news.mathworks.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.msfc.nasa.gov!bcm.tmc.edu!usenet 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 Lines: 16 Message-ID: <4aol56$8li@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu> References: <4ai90d$21m@mistral.toppoint.de> Reply-To: dan@dna.neusc.bcm.tmc.edu NNTP-Posting-Host: dnp.neusc.bcm.tmc.edu X-Newsreader: IBM NewsReader/2 v1.03 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.