Automated Dumps

[Robert Montjoy]

I have seen a couple of solutions to automated single user dumps. The one
I like is to create a file in / somewhere called dumpit(or whatever) and
then issue a shutdown command to reboot into single user mode.. When 

the machine reboots the rc script will check for the exsistance of /dumpit
and execute the proper sequence of commands to perform the dump. Finally,
the  /dumpit file is removed and the machine is rebooted..

The second solution is to umount the directory that is to be dumped and
then you can dump.(The only reason you go single user in the first place
is to so you can dump a non-active file system).. You dump the file system
and when the dump is finished remount.. Thus, allows you to do mutlti-user
dumps.. This is a good method when there are a lot of file systems to dump
on you do not want the server down for extened period of time.. The
biggest problem with this method is that all processes accessing the
filesystem on the local machine will have to be killed..

Rob Montjoy                   		- Rob.Montjoy at UC.Edu
Computer Engineer    	      		- montjoy at ucbeh.BITNET
University of Cincinnati      		- montjoy at babbage.ece.uc.edu
Electrical and Computer Enginering	- uunet!uceng!rmontjoy