[BBLISA] dump or Legato Networker?

[Daniel Feenberg]

On Fri, 28 Dec 2007, Michael Tiernan wrote:

> On Dec 23, 2007 11:51 PM, Dan Lipsitt <danlipsitt at gmail.com> wrote:
> [...]
>> You're probably thinking of this message from Linus in 2001:
> [...]
>> Dump was a stupid
>> program in the first place. Leave it behind."
>
> Ok, that might have been the thing that lead me to believe this.
>
> Thanks for tracking that down.
>
> Now the $1.97 question. What's the general take on this statement? Do
> we think the dump/restore pair are headed for the pasture (or maybe
> already there) or should we assume they're safe to use and won't cost
> us our data?
>
> Opinions?

Curtis Preston's original backup book had an detailed appendix on the 
posibilities of losing files with dump/restore, and the conclusion was 
quite favorable to the ancient program. He has a new book on this topic 
which I have not seen "Backup and Recovery", also from O'Reilly, which has 
a chapter "Limitations of Dump and Restore". Can someone who has seen it 
comment? Has he changed his mind?

I believe you are much more likely to lose files from user error than any 
of the theoretical problems complained about dump/restore, so the user 
interface is probably much more significant than anything else.

A link to the TOC the new book:

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596102463/toc.html

Daniel Feenberg
NBER