On Thu, Feb 24, 2005 at 12:52:17PM -0600, Karl W. Burkett wrote:
> mount("/dev/md/dsk/d92", "/tmp/.rlg.10aqFe/.rlg.10aqFe", 
> MS_RDONLY|MS_DATA|MS_OP
> TIONSTR, "ufs", 0xFFBFEBBC, 4) = 0

That'd be the fundamental reason that ufsdump wants root.  That
it fails to create the temp directory otherwise, turns out to be
pretty irrelevent, since what it does with the thing requires
root in the first place :-/

One can only guess what it's doing, but from Jon(?)'s observation
that the problem only arises on partial-filesystem dumps, my
guess would be that it's figuring out which inodes to dump by
traversing the file system via readdir() like any other process
-- even though it does the actual backup directly, via the
special file.  Well, I've seen things done in even-weirder
ways...

--

|  | /\
|-_|/  >   Eric Siegerman, Toronto, Ont.        erics AT telepres DOT com
|  |  /
The animal that coils in a circle is the serpent; that's why so
many cults and myths of the serpent exist, because it's hard to
represent the return of the sun by the coiling of a hippopotamus.
        - Umberto Eco, "Foucault's Pendulum"