[Networker] Questions on backing up hard links?

Does anyone know how NetWorker handles the backup/recovery of hard linksor how it's supposed to?

I tested backing up two files (TEST and TEST.ln). TEST was approx 10 KB.The second file is a hard link to the first. The one thing I noticed isthat NetWorker seems to indicate that only 10 KB was backed up. If I runnwrecover, I can see entries for both files, however. I guess this makessense because I wouldn't think NetWorker would actually back up files totape that are hard links since they share the same inode, and that wouldbe redundant data on tape, plus they are actually the same file as faras the OS is concerned, anyway, and NetWorker only sees what the OStells it. In other words, if I have 10 original files totaling 50 MB,and I then create a hard link to each one (link count now = 2 for all 20files), and I back up all 20 files, NetWorker will indicate that only 50MB was backed up, not 100 MB even though recover and verbose show all 20pathnames.

So is NetWorker merely updating the client index with information aboutthe hard link but not writing it to tape?

Another thing I notice is that if I remove the hard link (TEST.ln), andthen I recover the hard link, NetWorker indicates that it's reading 10KB, and when it restores it, while it has the same mtime, and same name(TEST.ln), it now has a new inode, so it's technically no longer a hardlink to TEST. A diff between the files shows no differences, but editingone is not reflected in the other, so NetWorker did not recover it as ahard link. It appears to be just an ordinary copy with the original name.

How does is it able to recover it? Does it just recover the original anrename it TEST.ln? Is this the behavior one would expect?

Does it make any sense to back up hard links? My testing shows that theyare not recovered as hard links so seems pointless to do so? You'd haveyour pathnames back, but they would just be copies taking up space, notactual hard links. You'd have to re-create the hard links from scratch.We're running an older 6.1.1 release on Solaris 2.8 primary server. Iwas doing my tests on a Linux client, but the backups and recovers werefrom our Linux storage node.


Thanks.

George

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