[wplug] fsck on mounted fs?

Petrucci, Joseph Joseph.Petrucci at ddiworld.com
Wed May 18 08:02:20 EDT 2005


A raw partition can be cloned if it is not active. for instance I use dd to get a COLD backup of the raw disk where I keep my master Sybase database devices after a major upgrade but only after I shutdown the Sybase instance and am certain that nothing else is ever using that device. A cold backup of Oracle works the same way . Fisrt make sure the process, which in this case is a database instance, that is using the device is not active then it should be safe to clone the device. 

My question is, if there is a file system on the device is it safe to mount the filesystem in read only and do a dd on it, or are there still disk maintenance processes that yould alter the devices meta-data that we need to worry about.

-----Original Message-----
From: wplug-bounces+joseph.petrucci=ddiworld.com at wplug.org
[mailto:wplug-bounces+joseph.petrucci=ddiworld.com at wplug.org]On Behalf
Of Zachary Uram
Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2005 11:11 PM
To: General user list
Subject: Re: [wplug] fsck on mounted fs?


On 5/17/05, Rob Prowel <tempest766 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> That is also the reason why you should never copy an
> active filesystem's raw device with dd to clone a disk
> drive.  I used to get sooo angry with other SAs who
> believed this was an acceptable way to clone disks.

So what is the safe canonical way to clone a disk? :)

Zach

<><
http://yoda.t35.com
><>

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