[NMLUG] Linux GHOST?

[Dan Lark]

On Sat, 24 Jan 2004, M. Warner Losh wrote:
> With ext3fs, I'd imagine there has to be some way you can do the same
> thing as dump, but since I don't deal with Linux enough to know, I
> can't be sure.
> 
> Warner

Yes, it is not only possible, but supported. This is an excerpt from the 
restore man page:

       -r     Restore  (rebuild)  a file system. The target file system 
should
              be made pristine with mke2fs(8), mounted, and the user cd'd 
into
              the  pristine file system before starting the restoration of 
the
              initial level 0 backup. If the level  0  restores  
successfully,
              the  -r  flag  may  be used to restore any necessary 
incremental
              backups on top of the level 0. The -r flag precludes an 
interac-
              tive file extraction and can be detrimental to one's health 
(not
              to mention the disk) if not used carefully. An example:

                     mke2fs /dev/sda1

                     mount /dev/sda1 /mnt

                     cd /mnt

                     restore rf /dev/st0

              Note that restore leaves a  file  restoresymtable  in  the  
root
              directory   to  pass  information  between  incremental  
restore
              passes.  This file should be removed when the  last  
incremental
              has been restored.

              Restore,  in conjunction with mke2fs(8) and dump(8), may be 
used
              to modify file system parameters such as size or block size.


This does, howver, preclude you from creating the partition on the fly, as 
you have to explicity partition/mk2efs the target.

As for a "Ghost" boot floppy replacement, I recall that there was/is a 
boot floppy specifically available for parted that has basically 
everything needed.

I do have two questions.

1. Does anyone know if extended attributes can be/are preserved with a 
dump/restore scenario or with parted? I would imagine 'dd' would take care 
of this implicitly.

2. Could you use LVM (or whatever they're calling it today) in htis 
scenario, e.g. dd/tar/cp/etc. files over to a new medium and then 'grow' 
the partition/space?

-dan