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Re: Symbolic links
2005-09-27 20:49:17
Frank, thank you for your explanation.
I didn't loose any data, what the links pointed to were backed up in other
DLE as you mentionned and were successfuly restored.
However, if it was only a couple links like /usr/local pointing to
/opt/local as you mentionned in your example, I could recreate them
easily... But when you have applications or users that use links everywhere,
well this is another story :-(
I guess I was hoping that, somehow??? even without following the link
itself, Amanda or Gnutar would be able to store where it was pointing to?...
So, if I understand you correctly, there is NO WAY using Amanda/Gnu Tar to
get those links to point back to what they were poiting at - if correct,
what about dump, would this solve this problem?
Jerome
----- Original Message -----
From: "Frank Smith" <fsmith AT hoovers DOT com>
To: "Jerome Pioux" <jerome.pioux AT bull DOT com>; <amanda-users AT amanda DOT
org>
Sent: Tuesday, September 27, 2005 4:30 PM
Subject: Re: Symbolic links
--On Tuesday, September 27, 2005 16:07:32 -0700 Jerome Pioux
<jerome.pioux AT bull DOT com> wrote:
Hi,
I am surely doing something wrong but I have problems restoring symbolic
links.
Files that were symbolic links at backup time became empty file (0 size)
after the restore?
Backups were made using TAR (GNU tar 1.15.1).
Any idea please? Thank you.
It sounds like the links are being restored (a link does have a size
of 0), but you are wondering why what the link points to is not there.
Tar (with the options Amanda calls it with) doesn't follow the link, it
just archives the link itself (and doesn't cross filesystem boundaries
either, nor does dump).
If you backup /usr, and /usr/local is a link to /opt/local then all
you will be backing up of /usr/local is the link itself. If you want
what the link points to backed up, you need to make sure that whatever
the link points to is either its own DLE or part of some other DLE.
In my example it means you would have to backup both /usr and /opt/local,
or perhaps just / if they are both on the same filesystem (and you don't
care if you are backing up more than you need to).
If you are wondering why tar isn't called with the option to follow
links, it is because it would cause data to be backed up multiple times
(once for the original and once for each link to it), and because it
would make recovery fail, both from the increased size possibly not
fitting on the disk and from the recovered filesystem not being the
same layout as the original (could you find all the copies of a file
if you needed to change it, and woul you want to have to?).
Frank
- Jerome
--
Frank Smith fsmith AT hoovers DOT com
Sr. Systems Administrator Voice: 512-374-4673
Hoover's Online Fax: 512-374-4501
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