9.7. Backup and Restoration of XFS File Systems
XFS file system backup and restoration involves two utilities: xfsdump and xfsrestore.
To backup or dump an XFS file system, use the xfsdump utility. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports backups to tape drives or regular file images, and also allows multiple dumps to be written to the same tape. The xfsdump utility also allows a dump to span multiple tapes, although only one dump can be written to a regular file. In addition, xfsdump supports incremental backups, and can exclude files from a backup using size, subtree, or inode flags to filter them.
In order to support incremental backups, xfsdump uses dump levels to determine a base dump to which a specific dump is relative. The -l option specifies a dump level (0-9). To perform a full backup, perform a level 0 dump on the file system (i.e. /path/to/filesystem
xfsdump -l 0 -f /dev/device /path/to/filesystem
The -f option specifies a destination for a backup. For example, the /dev/st0 destination is normally used for tape drives. An xfsdump destination can be a tape drive, regular file, or remote tape device.
In contrast, an incremental backup will only dump files that changed since the last level 0 dump. A level 1 dump is the first incremental dump after a full dump; the next incremental dump would be level 2, and so on, to a maximum of level 9. So, to perform a level 1 dump to a tape drive:
xfsdump -l 1 -f /dev/st0 /path/to/filesystem
Conversely, the xfsrestore utility restores file systems from dumps produced by xfsdump. The xfsrestore utility has two modes: a default simple mode, and a cumulative mode. Specific dumps are identified by session ID or session label. As such, restoring a dump requires its corresponding session ID or label. To display the session ID and labels of all dumps (both full and incremental), use the -I option, as in:
xfsrestore -I
This will provide output similar to the following:
file system 0:
fs id: 45e9af35-efd2-4244-87bc-4762e476cbab
session 0:
mount point: bear-05:/mnt/test
device: bear-05:/dev/sdb2
time: Fri Feb 26 16:55:21 2010
session label: "my_dump_session_label"
session id: b74a3586-e52e-4a4a-8775-c3334fa8ea2c
level: 0
resumed: NO
subtree: NO
streams: 1
stream 0:
pathname: /mnt/test2/backup
start: ino 0 offset 0
end: ino 1 offset 0
interrupted: NO
media files: 1
media file 0:
mfile index: 0
mfile type: data
mfile size: 21016
mfile start: ino 0 offset 0
mfile end: ino 1 offset 0
media label: "my_dump_media_label"
media id: 4a518062-2a8f-4f17-81fd-bb1eb2e3cb4f
xfsrestore: Restore Status: SUCCESS
The simple mode allows users to restore an entire file system from a level 0 dump. After identifying a level 0 dump's session ID (i.e. session-ID/path/to/destination
xfsrestore -f /dev/st0 -S session-ID /path/to/destination
The -f option specifies the location of the dump, while the -S or -L option specifies which specific dump to restore. The -S option is used to specify a session ID, while the -L option is used for session labels. The -I option displays both session labels and IDs for each dump.
xfsrestore Cumulative Mode
The cumulative mode of xfsrestore allows file system restoration from a specific incremental backup, i.e. level 1 to level 9. To restore a file system from an incremental backup, simply add the -r option, as in:
xfsrestore -f /dev/st0 -S session-ID -r /path/to/destination
The xfsrestore utility also allows specific files from a dump to be extracted, added, or deleted. To use xfsrestore interactively, use the -i option, as in:
xfsrestore -f /dev/st0 -i
The interactive dialogue will begin after xfsrestore finishes reading the specified device. Available commands in this dialogue include cd, ls, add, delete, and extract; for a complete list of commands, use help.
For more information about dumping and restoring XFS file systems, refer to man xfsdump and man xfsrestore.
