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From: Anton A. <ai...@ca...> - 2003-04-10 09:30:20
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On Wed, 9 Apr 2003, Szakacsits Szabolcs wrote:
> On Wed, 9 Apr 2003, Ian Jackson wrote:
> > So I think that there is room for both facilities: the optimised image
> > copy, and the conversion to a stream representation.
>
> I like simplicity. Your way seems to be the winner. If restoreimage can
> create a sparse file of the original image [metadata] that't fine with me
> (needed for debug, test, development). Now this is fast, reliable and
> works.
I agree that a simple image format is a good idea but I also think that
being able to create a simple sparse file for debugging purposes
especially a metadata only file is extremely valuable, too. If we can
combine the two utilities that would probably be the best thing. My
suggestion would be to create one utility rather than two different ones
and that utility for example (just picking at random, feel free to use
different) takes a first parameter "b" for create image/backup, "r" for
restore image/backup and then a second optional parameter say "s" for
working with a sparse file as the source ("r"/restore case) or destination
("b"/backup case). Much like the tar utility works in a way...
You could have long options, too like "--backup --sparse" or whatever if
you wanted in addition...
Anyway just ideas...
> > I hope you'll accept my program which does write a stream format into
> > the linux-ntfs package.
>
> Anton's decision but I support it. My wishes are only
Yes, of course. But ideally I would like to see the two functionalities in
one rather than having two separate imaging programs, one for sparse
files and one for custom image format...
> - must have the consistency check. My experiences from ntfsresize
> feedbacks is that there are many corrupted NTFS out there. chkdsk fixed
> them nicely. In general no point and dangerous to backup a corrupted
> NTFS (unless it's for recovery). This can be taken from my version if
> you don't have [actually I'm planing to make it a library function].
Agreed.
> - restoreimage should be able to create the image as a sparse file. I
> don't think this would be a big issue.
I think this is the wrong level. I really don't want to have to create an
image to be able to create a sparse file from that, that would take twice
the space on disk and twice the time. Not worth it IMHO. Much better to
have the imaging program do it immediately on image creation. It would
also be really nice if on restore the imaging program can take the sparse
file and use that to restore the data to the partition. That allows for
example to run ntfsck (that will one day be written) and then to just
restore the metadata to the old state quickly by restoring the sparse
image with the metadata only option enabled.
Best regards,
Anton
--
Anton Altaparmakov <aia21 at cam.ac.uk> (replace at with @)
Linux NTFS maintainer / IRC: #ntfs on irc.freenode.net
WWW: http://linux-ntfs.sf.net/ & http://www-stu.christs.cam.ac.uk/~aia21/
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