[Dump-users] Help please - recovery of partial dump

[Tim B. <tb...@ce...>]

Hi,

A colleague of mine was using dump to archive some important data, and
it looks like he made an error in the dump.  He has a single file dumped
off an ext3 partition but when he tries to restore it:

# /sbin/restore -id -f Mal_06.01.05dmp
Volume header (old inode format) begins with record 7961470
Volume header (old inode format) begins with record 7961470
Dump tape is compressed.
/sbin/restore: Tape is not volume 1 of the dump

And indeed the GNU file command reveals:

# file /media/FWdrive/Mal_06.01.05dmp
/media/FWdrive/Mal_06.01.05dmp: new-fs dump file (little endian), This
dump Thu Jan  6 16:46:09 2005, Previous dump Thu Jan  1 01:00:00 1970,
Volume 2, Level zero, type: tape header, Label /home, Filesystem /home,
Device /dev/hda6, Host censored.foo.ox.ac.uk, Flags 81

My colleague claims he made the dump with the command:

/sbin/dump -0 -j -n -f /tmp/Mal_06.01.05dmp /home

and that only one file was produced.  Given that I am unfamiliar with
dump/restore (my suggestion was to use tar for this backup) could anyone
tell me:

1) Under what circumstances would dump overwrite the first volume with
the second?

2) If my colleague really does have just the second volume, can anything
be salvaged from the file?

Thanks,

TIM

-- 
Tim Booth <tb...@ce...>
EGTDC at CEH Oxford