Posted on September 9, 2018
Dumping advfs file systems to a file on disk in Digital/Tru64 UNIX
In preparation for migrating my Digital UNIX environment to a larger HDD on my Personal Workstation, I needed to backup a couple of file systems containing install kits I would want to use again on the new install. Rather than backup to an old DDS tape like I had done previously, I took the route of writing the backup set to a file on the hard disk and transferring it to my PC over FTP.
I created the dump on Digital UNIX 4.0D and intend to restore it on Digital UNIX 4.0E which I recently acquired media for and would like to use on my Personal Workstation as I believe it is the version normally shipped on these machines since it adds USB support. I doubt I will use the USB support but I am also interested to see if it has better support for the IDE optical drive on the machine as 4.0D refused to install from it and I had to connect up an external SCSI DVD-ROM drive instead. To the best of my knowledge this is also the last Digital UNIX branded version of the operating system before the rebrand to Compaq/HP Tru64 UNIX.
To the main point of this post, how exactly do we dump an advfs file system to a file? I used the command below:
vdump -0 -f /backup/kits.vdump -v /kits
-0 Specifies the backup level and 0 causes the entire fileset to be backed up to the destination location
-f [path] Specifies the file or device (e.g. tape drive) where the fileset will be written
-v Displays the names of the files being backed up
The final option is the path for the file system being backed up, which in this is case is mounted at “/kits”
I chose to call the backup file “kits.vdump” so I knew that this file was a vdump backup as by default the file will just not have an extension if you don’t specify one.
Once I have installed Digital UNIX 4.0E (which you can expect another post about!) I will write another post on how to perform a restore from this file.
I am working on a FUSE/AdvFS Port for Linux and was just wondering you could help me out? ….currently I am able to create domains/filesets, mount them and read/write to the the mounted filesets and make clonefsets on linux and I believe they should be inline with OSD v5 structures. But I haven’t completed vdump/restore or other features and have no images I can use to ensure that I am fully inline with the original implementation in Alpha. I wondered if you had a vdump file image you could share with me? so I can ensure that the linux tools and functions are fully inline with “Native Tru64 image compatibility”
not synthetic fixes which appear to be advfs like? I would be truly grateful if you can help me out.
Hi, happy to help if I can. I don’t have any to hand, but I can boot one of my Alpha boxes into Tru64 and grab a vdump file within the next few days.