Bill Cunningham wrote:
> How does this dump work? I want to make a dump of a vfat filesystem.
>
> Bill
>
>

If i understand your meaning correctly (please correct if i'm mistaken)
you want to write out an entire vfat partition to disk. the simplest way
to do this is,
dd if=/dev/hdb1 of=~/partitionimage.img
....that is assuming the vfat partition is on /dev/hdb1. you'll need to
adjust that accordingly, but the rest should work. i should warn you,
though, that this will make a file in the user's home dir as large as
the vfat partition itself. please make sure you have enough space before
attempting this, or it will be a complete waste of time.

after the process is complete, you can view the data obtained in any hex
editor, or mount it with the command
mount -o loop -t vfat partitionimage.img /mnt/vfatimg

Pandora Xero wrote:

> Bill Cunningham wrote:
>
>> How does this dump work? I want to make a dump of a vfat filesystem.
>
> If i understand your meaning correctly (please correct if i'm mistaken)
> you want to write out an entire vfat partition to disk. the simplest way
> to do this is,
> dd if=/dev/hdb1 of=~/partitionimage.img
....

I thought he meant:

# man 8 dump
DUMP(8) System Manager's Manual DUMP(8)

NAME
dump - ext2 filesystem backup
....
BUGS
It might be considered a bug that this version of dump can only handle
ext2 filesystems. Specifically, it does not work with FAT filesystems.

>> If i understand your meaning correctly (please correct if i'm mistaken)
>> you want to write out an entire vfat partition to disk. the simplest way
>> to do this is,
>> dd if=/dev/hdb1 of=~/partitionimage.img
> ...
>
> I thought he meant:
>
> # man 8 dump
> DUMP(8) System Manager's Manual DUMP(8)
>
> NAME
> dump - ext2 filesystem backup
> ...
> BUGS
> It might be considered a bug that this version of dump can only
> handle
> ext2 filesystems. Specifically, it does not work with FAT
> filesystems.

dump only works on ext2 then? Not ext3 or reiser or vfat? The old unixes
had the dd command and dump and restorr. Is there really no difference in
dump and dd output to a file ?

Bill

Bill Cunningham wrote:

....
>>BUGS
>> It might be considered a bug that this version of dump can only
>>handle
>> ext2 filesystems. Specifically, it does not work with FAT
>>filesystems.
>
> dump only works on ext2 then? Not ext3

ext3 = ext2 + journal, so should work.

I suspect it may be more a case of requiring stat(2) to work properly - vfat
fails to do this properly.

> or reiser or vfat? The old unixes

Just to point out, that was the version of dump I happened to look at the
man page of. for proper info, look at:

AVAILABILITY
The dump/restore backup suit is available from
http://dump.sourceforge.net

> had the dd command and dump and restorr. Is there really no difference in
> dump and dd output to a file ?

yes. afaics, dump only dumps files that have changed:

$ man dump
....
DESCRIPTION
Dump examines files on an ext2 filesystem and determines which files need
to be backed up...