[CLUE-Tech] creating system backups

[Matt Gushee]

Ed Hill writes:

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

No quarrel with that, at least the first part.

 > 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.

Right, because you use the -f option. To quote from the mkisofs man
page:

   -f     Follow  symbolic links when generating the filesys-
          tem.  When this option  is  not  in  use,  symbolic
          links  will be entered using Rock Ridge if enabled
          otherwise the file will be ignored.

Like I said, the man page explains what to do, just not very
clearly. Your symlinks are preserved if you use -R or -r (the two are
similar) *without* -f.

 
Matt Gushee
Englewood, CO, USA