Hello,
I have been using mondorescue to backup to dvd for several months now without any problems.
Since upgrading to Centos 4.4, I now receive a few errors. The errors are for files in /var/named/chroot/proc. I guess these files change so when I do a differntial backup they aren't there and result in errors. (Never got any errors before and I think these files were there in 4.3) If I exclude the files from the backup, no errors.
My question is what, if any problems would I run into not backing these files up and having to do a complete system restore?
TIA,
Eddie
Thomas E Dukes wrote:
Hello,
I have been using mondorescue to backup to dvd for several months now without any problems.
Since upgrading to Centos 4.4, I now receive a few errors. The errors are for files in /var/named/chroot/proc. I guess these files change so when I do a differntial backup they aren't there and result in errors. (Never got any errors before and I think these files were there in 4.3) If I exclude the files from the backup, no errors.
What kind errors?
My question is what, if any problems would I run into not backing these files up and having to do a complete system restore?
That is more of a question for mondorescue list...
Thomas E Dukes wrote:
Hello,
I have been using mondorescue to backup to dvd for several months now without any problems.
Since upgrading to Centos 4.4, I now receive a few errors. The errors are for files in /var/named/chroot/proc. I guess these files change so when I do a differntial backup they aren't there and result in errors. (Never got any errors before and I think these files were there in 4.3) If I exclude the files from the backup, no errors.
My question is what, if any problems would I run into not backing these files up and having to do a complete system restore?
TIA,
Eddie
You shouldn't run into any problems really since files within "proc" aren't really there to begin with; they're resident in memory only and disappear when the machine shuts down or reboots.
-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of Mark Weaver Sent: Tuesday, September 05, 2006 9:11 PM To: CentOS mailing list Subject: Re: [CentOS] OT - backup question/advice
Thomas E Dukes wrote:
Hello,
I have been using mondorescue to backup to dvd for several
months now
without any problems.
Since upgrading to Centos 4.4, I now receive a few errors.
The errors
are for files in /var/named/chroot/proc. I guess these
files change
so when I do a differntial backup they aren't there and result in errors. (Never got any errors before and I think these files were there in 4.3) If I exclude the files from the backup, no errors.
My question is what, if any problems would I run into not backing these files up and having to do a complete system restore?
TIA,
Eddie
You shouldn't run into any problems really since files within "proc" aren't really there to begin with; they're resident in memory only and disappear when the machine shuts down or reboots.
-- Mark
Thanks, Mark!
Kinda what I figured but wanted a second opinion. The errors I received were 'files not found'. So this answers my question.
Again, thanks!
Eddie
Thomas E Dukes wrote:
-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of Mark Weaver Sent: Tuesday, September 05, 2006 9:11 PM To: CentOS mailing list Subject: Re: [CentOS] OT - backup question/advice
Thomas E Dukes wrote:
Hello,
I have been using mondorescue to backup to dvd for several
months now
without any problems.
Since upgrading to Centos 4.4, I now receive a few errors.
The errors
are for files in /var/named/chroot/proc. I guess these
files change
so when I do a differntial backup they aren't there and result in errors. (Never got any errors before and I think these files were there in 4.3) If I exclude the files from the backup, no errors.
My question is what, if any problems would I run into not backing these files up and having to do a complete system restore?
TIA,
Eddie
You shouldn't run into any problems really since files within "proc" aren't really there to begin with; they're resident in memory only and disappear when the machine shuts down or reboots.
-- Mark
Thanks, Mark!
Kinda what I figured but wanted a second opinion. The errors I received were 'files not found'. So this answers my question.
Again, thanks!
Eddie
no problem. personally I've always wondered why the proc file system exists at all as part of the file system. ya can't do anything with it; it's more of a tease than anything else. When I first started with Linux years ago I wasn't aware of it's "specialness" and looked like the monkey with his fist in a jar trying to do things with those "files" in there. ;P
Mark Weaver wrote:
no problem. personally I've always wondered why the proc file system exists at all as part of the file system. ya can't do anything with it; it's more of a tease than anything else. When I first started with Linux years ago I wasn't aware of it's "specialness" and looked like the monkey with his fist in a jar trying to do things with those "files" in there. ;P
Huh? The /proc filesystem provides info for system monitoring tools (like "top"). Also, the "files" therein provide system config infomation, and can be altered to reset lots of things dynamically during system run (check out "sysctl", for instance). -Alan
Alan Sparks wrote:
Mark Weaver wrote:
no problem. personally I've always wondered why the proc file system exists at all as part of the file system. ya can't do anything with it; it's more of a tease than anything else. When I first started with Linux years ago I wasn't aware of it's "specialness" and looked like the monkey with his fist in a jar trying to do things with those "files" in there. ;P
Huh? The /proc filesystem provides info for system monitoring tools (like "top"). Also, the "files" therein provide system config infomation, and can be altered to reset lots of things dynamically during system run (check out "sysctl", for instance). -Alan
I forgot to add the "tongue in cheek" part. my bad.
of course I'm aware of those things now, but at the time... well that was a different story. hence the monkey with his fist in the jar. Actually I'm more interested to know just what processes go on the actually create that file system.
Mark Weaver wrote:
no problem. personally I've always wondered why the proc file system exists at all as part of the file system. ya can't do anything with it; it's more of a tease than anything else. When I first started with Linux years ago I wasn't aware of it's "specialness" and looked like the monkey with his fist in a jar trying to do things with those "files" in there. ;P
In Unix (and hence Linux), everything's a file. A network connexion's a file, a pipe's a file, a disk's a file, a serial port's a file .... Mostly, you can use the same "file" operations on any of them.
I gather that on some systems, everything's virtual memory.
You don't even want to try and back up the proc fs. Have a look at the size of /proc/kcore.
If there is an option to not cross filesystems then turn that on (like tar -l or find -xdev).
Failing that, use mount to find everywhere that proc and sysfs is mounted and exclude them manually.
John.
Thomas E Dukes wrote:
Hello,
I have been using mondorescue to backup to dvd for several months now without any problems.
Since upgrading to Centos 4.4, I now receive a few errors. The errors are for files in /var/named/chroot/proc. I guess these files change so when I do a differntial backup they aren't there and result in errors. (Never got any errors before and I think these files were there in 4.3) If I exclude the files from the backup, no errors.
My question is what, if any problems would I run into not backing these files up and having to do a complete system restore?
TIA,
Eddie
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of John Newbigin Sent: Tuesday, September 05, 2006 9:42 PM To: CentOS mailing list Subject: Re: [CentOS] OT - backup question/advice
You don't even want to try and back up the proc fs. Have a look at the size of /proc/kcore.
If there is an option to not cross filesystems then turn that on (like tar -l or find -xdev).
Failing that, use mount to find everywhere that proc and sysfs is mounted and exclude them manually.
John.
Hello John,
I should have known this. I exclude /proc from my backup so I should have figure to do the same for /var/named/chroot/proc.
Thanks,
Eddie
John Newbigin wrote:
You don't even want to try and back up the proc fs. Have a look at the size of /proc/kcore.
If there is an option to not cross filesystems then turn that on (like tar -l or find -xdev).
Failing that, use mount to find everywhere that proc and sysfs is mounted and exclude them manually.
and usbfs and (probably) more, now or in the future.
Better, explicitly backup the filesystems you want.
mondo uses afio internally afio is like cpio with some improvements such as compressing files _before_ adding them to the archive (a bad block on a tape doesn't automatically destroy everything following), and measuring archive size _after_ compression (compare that with tar * cpio).
Thomas E Dukes wrote:
Hello,
I have been using mondorescue to backup to dvd for several months now without any problems.
Since upgrading to Centos 4.4, I now receive a few errors. The errors are for files in /var/named/chroot/proc. I guess these files change so when I do a differntial backup they aren't there and result in errors. (Never got any errors before and I think these files were there in 4.3) If I exclude the files from the backup, no errors.
My question is what, if any problems would I run into not backing these files up and having to do a complete system restore?
Take care with what you backup; there is _no_ point in backing up any of the kernel's pseudo-filesystems including proc.
Also, take care using mondo; the last two times I looked at it, the code was horribly trusting of information the user provided; the first time it could easily be provoked to SEGV errors.
The second time, I contented myself with picking out some of the source code that I thought looked a but sus (I'm not much of a C programmer, and at my age I don't care to add it to my resume). People much more export than I (including Debian/Ubuntu developers) agreed with my appraisal. Worse, when I took it up with the author the first time, he denied flatly there was a problem, and claimed "It's not a backup tool, it's a disaster-recovery tool."
It's a shame, because there's much to commend the basic idea.
Take a look at DAR, it provides similar capability. It can be found at sf.net, and probably one or more of the extras repos.
If there is a fan of mondo here who's a capable C programmer and who understands secure programming, I suggest you audit the code. Mondo needs it.
-
Alan Sparks -
John Newbigin -
John Summerfied -
Mark Weaver -
Thomas E Dukes -
Ugo Bellavance