On Fri, Jul 25, 2014 at 02:45:50PM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote: > Greetings; > > It turns out some of my backups for this machine will not be usable, > particularly for a bare metal recovery on a new drive, due to a miss- > understanding of the --one-filesystem option by tar-1.27, and 1.27.1 does > not fix it. > > The problem is that this system is currently installed with two > partitions, 3 actually if you count swap space. > > They are /boot, and / > > So tar refuses to back up a softlink that points to a directory/file that > is in a different dir than the current disklist entry points to, EVEN > THOUGH IT IS IN FACT on the same filesystem. > > The config I've been using for a decade and change uses that option > command. Will removing it (--one-filesystem) from my config fix this > missing links in the backup problem? Or will that result in its making a > duplicate backup file of what is at the end of that softlink? > > IMNSHO, when tar encounters such a link, instead of making a backup of > that file at the end of the link, it should backup the contents of the > links text so that an amrecovery will re-create the link file. > > It is not doing that either, so how do, or can, I force tar to do that and > result in a fully usable backup? > > This does not seem to me to be a violation of the one filesystem command, > making sense ONLY if the link is to a different partition, which could be > a different filesystem, which this present situation is most certainly > not. Different directory yes, different filesystem, no.
I don't think --one-file-system has anything to do with it. That option deals with encountering a directory that is on another filesystem and whether tar should backup what is in, and below, that directory. The option for dealing with symbolic links is --dereference (-h). Without that option the symbolic link is archived regardless of the location of the target and regardless of the --one-file-system option. With the --dereference option the target is archived, again regardless of location and --one-file-system option. Jon -- Jon H. LaBadie [email protected] 11226 South Shore Rd. (703) 787-0688 (H) Reston, VA 20190 (609) 477-8330 (C)
