Why idle backups?? (was Re: Looking for shell script for backup on BSD 4.3)

[John Warburton]

>From article <547 at fciva.FRANKLIN.COM>, by dag at fciva.FRANKLIN.COM (Daniel A. Graifer):
> I have written a sequence of scripts we use here to get the system into an
> assured idle state for unattended backup.  These depend on init state 4 being

[ rather a good algorithm for backups deleted]

Forgive my ignorance, but I have looked through TFM, and it says that you should
not do a dump on an active file system. That's OK, but WHY??? I can't see any
documentation as to what would happen if you did do a dump on an live file
system.

My reasoning for this is that we currently do our back ups at midnight each
night WITHOUT shutting down the system. Is this likely to cause problems with
restoring files??

Any pointers will be appreciated,
thanks

John
--
John Warburton                          Phone   : +61 8 228 5583
Department of Computer Science          Telex   : UNIVAD AA89141
University of Adelaide                  Fax     : +61 8 223 1206
GPO Box 498 Adelaide SA 5001            ACSnet  : john at cs.ua.oz
AUSTRALIA                               Internet: john at cs.adelaide.edu.au
John Warburton                          Phone   : +61 8 228 5583
Department of Computer Science          Telex   : UNIVAD AA89141
University of Adelaide                  Fax     : +61 8 223 1206
GPO Box 498 Adelaide SA 5001            ACSnet  : john at cs.ua.oz