chattr

[Keyser Soze]

On Tue, 28 Jan 2003, Michael O'Donnell wrote:
> 
> I'd be surprised if dd was anybody's first choice as a
> backup utility, but the approach in question (copying
> all bits from one device to another) does in fact
> work very nicely, resulting in an EXACT copy of the
> filesystem in question, unallocated blocks and all.
> 
> And there's no requirement that you only copy
> to a partition of the same size; the transferred
> filesystem carries its own size indication with it.
> You can dd a 50Mb filesystem into a 100Mb partition
> without any trouble whatsoever, other than the
> resultant filesystem will only describe 50Mb worth
> of storage, so the remainder of the 100Mb partition
> will not be "reachable" because the metadata in the
> copied filesystem will not refer to it.  Of course,
> trying to copy a 100Mb filesystem to a 50Mb partition
> is only rarely successful...  ;->


Yeah, dd is definitely not the best way to make continuous backups, since
it cannot back up incrementally like dump can.  Its great for, say,
storing a zipped backup of your pc's filesystem on your nfs before
installing a new OS on that pc.

Now if anything goes wrong, at least your pc's old filesystem is still
bootably intact, all the attributes are preserved(very important since its
what the thread's all about), and you can access the all files anytime you
want without having to perform a full restoration.