When I backed up the root /etc directory from root volume to non-root volume, I did use rsync.

About 2 years ago, that operation started crashing the filers because when some sensitive files were removed in preparation for replacement, the filer would crash and reboot even though it was a non-root volume that was being changed. I stopped rsync'ing and have not restarted that practice. We currently back up the /etc directories on all our filers to other systems.

There may be someone on the list that can testify as to whether NetApp has made the non-root volumes more forgiving when it comes to /etc files being changed and removed. I didn't follow it for lack of time.

At 1:59 PM -0400 9/23/03, devnull@adc.idt.com wrote:

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Some may say "Whoa, you have to have a separate root volume!" I say "Baloney!. The only time I came close to losing a root volume was in the infancy of NetApp; we did have to reboot and use a different volume as root volume (I had copied the /etc to the non-root volume)

Did you update your /RootVolume/etc/ to /NoneRootVolume/Another_etc_dir daily using rsync ? Or was it a one time copy thingie ?

I am quite sure i want to do this on my filers, there has been some discussion on this list suggesting that it might not work. It has for you and so any pointers are MUCH appareciated.

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Another concern might be that "We're afraid the root volume will get full!" which you can easily avoid by judicious and simple quotas.

Agreed.

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The only other thing I can think of is the time it takes to back up and restore by volume size.

Very true.

If backup is done via nfs rather than NDMP, it might not be an issue though.

Thanks