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Date: Sat, 9 Oct 2010 16:56:08 -0400
From: Greg Freemyer <greg.freemyer@...il.com>
To: Chris Lee <cslee-list@...ericom.co.uk>
Cc: linux-ext4@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Shorten the backup process?
On Sat, Oct 9, 2010 at 4:35 PM, Chris Lee <cslee-list@...ericom.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Hi All,
> I hope this to bee food for thought as I am not able to code such a thing nor am I in need of such a thing but it seemed like a good idea when it struck me, so;
> When an filesystem is snap shotted it is a function of the running filesystem to provide the data in that snapshot. (or is that lvms doing?)
> Most users who use snapshots for backup are going to mount the snap shot and then tar it up.
> Would it be a good idea to provide a virtual file through something like the sysfs that is a tar representation of the snapshot so that a backup can just copy the tar file off as needed?
>
> Thanks for reading,
>
> Regards,
> Chris.
That seems like an overly specialized feature for the kernel.
And even if it were a good idea conceptually:
1) ext4 does not currently offer filesystem snapshot capability. It
is handled at a lower level in the block stack. (ie. either in the
hardware array or via device mapper).
2) Those lower levels simply are aware of blocks / sectors, not files.
Thus they have no ability to create a "tar" file.
fyi: btrfs is a more integrated filesystem, so it is at least
technically feasible with it.
Greg
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