RE: Definition of dump levels?

["Jack Coats-4" <user=26@nabble.blu.org>]

 Scott, 

Dump levels are great if you want to manage your backup down to the n'th 
degree. 

You have it right, level 0 is full. 
Each subsequent level will not backup whatever has been backed up (using 
dates) 
by any previous level. 

You might want to use Level 0 on Sunday, 1 on Monday, 2 on Tuesday, 3 on 
Wednesday, 
1 on Thursday, 2 on Friday and 3 on Saturday. 

To restore a system to Saturday, you would need Sunday (0), Thursday through 
Saturdays 
dumps (1,2,3).  So you would NOT need to restore Monday through Wednesdays 
backups. 

Or in another scenario, you could do level 0 once a month on the first 
Saturday, 
level 1 for the other Saturdays, 4 on Wednesdays, and level 9 on all other 
days. 

For personal or small business work, it would keep down the number of 
different tapes 
needed.  Including keeping down the number of tapes you would need to spin 
to do a 
'full restore'. 

I hope that might help a little. 

... Jack 

-----Original Message----- 
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of 
John Abreau 
Sent: Saturday, January 05, 2008 12:55 PM 
To: [hidden email] 
Subject: Re: Definition of dump levels? 

Level N dumps everything with a last-modified date after the date of Level 
N-1 as found in /etc/dumpdates, where N >= 1. 

Level 0 always dumps everything; it doesn't have to look at /etc/dumpates, 
since by definition there are no dump levels below 0. 


On Jan 5, 2008 8:32 AM, Scott Ehrlich <[hidden email]> wrote: 
> I've seen so many references to dump levels, but none of them, 
> including the man page, actually says what, specifically, each level 
covers. 
> 
> For example, a level 0 would presumably back up everything.  But will 
> it still do so if I perform a level 0 today, update /etc/dumpdates, 
> then perform another level 0 just after, and no files have changed? 
> 
> What about the other levels?  What do they do? 
> 
> Thanks. 
> 
> Scott 
> 
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