[CLUE-Tech] creating system backups

[Ed Hill]

AFAIK, tar is your best bet on preserving all of the file metadata and
for preserving soft-links.

I routinely use mkisofs with the "-R -f" options and sometimes with the
"-R -J -f" option set.  This will "follow" soft-links (ie. copy the data
into the iso image) but it will not preserve the soft-link in the way
that you desire.  Fortunately, I don't use soft-links a lot in my data
directories so its not a big issue...  If it were, I would definately
take the time to create a tar archive first and then burn the archive to
the CDR.

hth,
Ed


On Sat, 2001-12-29 at 22:01, Matt Gushee wrote:
> jason at matchingmoms.com writes:
>  > I'm trying to create backups of some key directories (/etc /home /var) and
>  > write them to CD-ROM.
>  > 
>  > My first attempt was mkisofs | cdrecord, but that throws away the symlinks,
>  > which I want.
> 
> Throwing away symlinks has nothing to do with the pipe, as far as I
> know. Try enabling Rock Ridge extensions with the -r flag to mkisofs.
> This is explained in the manual page, by the way, though not very
> clearly.
> 
> By the way, why are you so dead set on not writing the CD image to a
> file? Is it just lack of space on your hard drive?
> 
> Matt Gushee
> Englewood, CO, USA

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Edward H. Hill III, PhD
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