On Mon, Sep 22, 2003 at 04:13:27PM -0300, Bruno Negrão wrote:
> 
> I fully backed up the /etc directory of one of my servers and restored in the
> /root/etc directory. These two directories differ each other on its sizes, 
> where
> the original /etc directory is slightly bigger than its backup.
>
> Is this normal?

du is going to include the size of the directories themselves, so
a small size difference (with the original larger) is not surprising,
even if there is no actual data change in the original:

    % cat dirtest
    #!/bin/sh
    mkdir foo
    /bin/du -k foo
    num=1
    while [ $num -lt 10000 ] ; do
        echo $num > foo/file.$num
        num=`expr $num + 1`
    done
    /bin/du -k foo
    rm foo/*
    /bin/du -k foo

    % ./dirtest
    1       foo
    10207   foo
    208     foo

See?

However, /etc does contain dynamic files (mtab, ntp/drift,
mail/statistics), so the difference could be quite real.

diff -r would tell you.

-- 
Jay Lessert                               jay_lessert AT accelerant DOT net
Accelerant Networks Inc.                       (voice)1.503.439.3461
Beaverton OR, USA                                (fax)1.503.466.9472