FC3 backup bug

Jeff Vian jvian10 at charter.net
Mon Jul 25 21:22:47 UTC 2005


On Sun, 2005-07-24 at 18:25 -0600, Lloyd Hayes wrote:
> Bug notice on FC3. I noticed the other day that Fedora Core 3 seemed to
> have a bug. When backing up data to a Fat32 formated removable hard
> drive, not all data gets written recursively. I found some directories
> which had been copied from my FC3 systems with several sub directories
> had the directories empty on the receiving drive, but not on the
> originating drive. 
> 
> Going onto the respective drives in the respective directories and
> copying the necessary files was one answer that worked. But I don't
> understand what was happening. 
> 
> I actually noticed this while trying to restore data to the FC4 system.
> In going back onto a computer with FC3 and recreating the directories on
> the removable hard drive, I was able to see that not all information was
> being written by simply copying the parent directories to the drive.
> 
How are you doing the backup?  Using cp, or a backup tool like mondo,
tar, or some other?

If using cp then the effective way to get all the data copied (and
permissions to stay the same when copying from/to linux partitions) is
to use "cp -a <file/directory>".  That will maintain permissions and do
the copy recursive.

However, copying to a fat32 system with cp then trying to restore and
expecting the permissions to be the same is (almost) a lost cause since
fat32 has no concept of the linux ownership/permissions on files.  IMHO,
using tar to create an archive copy is the best and surest way to have a
reliable copy when storing data on a different filesystem type.

Missing data is often the result of not using proper options when
issuing the command.


> -- 
> Lloyd Hayes
> 
> Personal Website
> http://talkingstaff.bravehost.com/index.html
> 
> Web Journal
> http://lloyd_hayes.bravejournal.com/
> 




More information about the fedora-list mailing list