[comp.unix.wizards] dump - Sun/BSD dump-level idiosyncracies?

MANSFIEL%EMBL.BITNET@wiscvm.wisc.EDU (Niall Mansfield) (06/26/87)

Sun say that if you dump at e.g. level 4, you get all files
which changed since the last level 0, 1, 2, or 3.  Thus, if
you keep on doing level 4's, your dump is getting bigger and
bigger, e.g. if the sequence is

files changed:     C1   C2   C3   C4   C5   C6   C7   ...
dump level done:      4    4    4    4    4    4    4   ...

where Ci is the set of files changed since the last dump (of
any level), then your successive dumps will contain

1st dump:       C1
2nd             C1 C2
3rd             C1 C2 C3
4th             C1 C2 C3 C4
etc

Now, Eric Foxley  (in his book "Unix for Super-Users") says
that  you dump repeatedly at level 4 you would get

1st dump:       C1
2nd             C2
3rd             C3
4th             C4
etc

which seems a more truly "incremental" method.

Is this a difference between Sun/BSD and the AT&T line?
What is the rationale behind it?

Thanks,

Niall

ht@unisol.UUCP (Haral Tsitsivas) (06/27/87)

In article <8034@brl-adm.ARPA>  MANSFIEL%EMBL.BITNET@wiscvm.wisc.EDU (Niall 
>Mansfield) writes:
>Sun say that if you dump at e.g. level 4, you get all files
>which changed since the last level 0, 1, 2, or 3.  

The Sun documentations says the right thing (at least for BSD systems)...

>Now, Eric Foxley  (in his book "Unix for Super-Users") says
>that  you dump repeatedly at level 4 you would get

>1st dump:       C1
>2nd             C2
>3rd             C3
>4th             C4

>which seems a more truly "incremental" method.

If you really wanted to do what you say with your example you would do
dumps at successively higher levels (i.e. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9).  

It doesn't really make sense to dump files not dumped since the last time
a dump of the same level was done...  That would place you in a position
of having to keep all your dump tapes (and restore from all of them if
you had to) and it would probably brake the logic of most dump schemes.
What would you do at level 0 (the full dump)?  Dump everything since
the last full dump?

--Haral Tsitsivas