Veritas File System 4.1 Administrator's Guide (HP-UX 11i v3, February 2007)

VERITAS File System Quick Reference
Veritas File System Quick Reference
Appendix A 181
Backing Up and Restoring a File System
To back up a VxFS file system, you first create a read-only snapshot file system, then back up the snapshot.
This procedure lets you keep the main file system on line. The snapshot is a copy of the snapped file system
that is frozen at the moment the snapshot is created.
See Chapter 6, “Online Backup Using File System Snapshots,” on page 101 and the following manual pages
for more information about the mount, vxdump, and vxrestore commands and their available options:
• mount(1M)
• mount_vxfs(1M)
• vxdump(1M)
• vxrestore(1M)
How to Create and Mount a Snapshot File System
The first step in backing up a VxFS file system is to create and mount a snapshot file system. To create and
mount a snapshot of a VxFS file system, use the syntax:
mount [-F vxfs] -o snapof=source,[snapsize=size] \destination
snap_mount_point
source The special device name or mount point of the file system to copy.
destination The name of the special device on which to create the snapshot.
size The size of the snapshot file system in sectors.
snap_mount_point Location where to mount the snapshot; snap_mount_point must exist before you
enter this command.
Example A-11 To create a snapshot file system of the file system at /home on
/dev/vx/dsk/fsvol/vol1 and mount it at /snapmount
Enter:
# mount -F vxfs -o snapof=/home, \snapsize=32768 /dev/vx/dsk/fsvol/vol1
/snapmount
You can now back up the file system, as described in the following section.
How to Back Up a File System
After creating a snapshot file system as described in the previous section, you can use vxdump to back it up.
To back up a VxFS snapshot file system, use the syntax:
vxdump [-c] [-f backupdev] snap_mount_point