(Illustration by Gaich Muramatsu)
So what would be really cool, IMHO, is a 'venusdump' program that would read RVM and the container files and output a stream in BSD dump format that would have the following properties: * level 0 gets the whole cache. level 1 the files that aren't on the server. other levels are probably not needed. * one could simply run restore on it to get a filesystem hierarchy in a normal fs containing all the files in the cache * one could run 'venusrestore' on it which would perhaps init rvm and add the cached files and their metadata (version vectors) back into the client cache To do this, I'd imagine one would have to make some fake files containing metadata in the dump stream, and cope with collisions of those names with existing files by some sort of escape coding mechanism. In addition, it would be nice to be able to run a similar program 'vicedump' on the server, getting essentially the same format, but perhaps with different metadata records. Together, this would enable moving client caches to new disks (very helpful when one has 100 Mb cached on a 28.8 line), doing the same for servers with a great degree of safety. It could also enable a laptop user with no net to spit the contents of the cache out to a floppy/zip disk for safekeeping. Perhaps most importantly for me, it would provide a nice backup strategy - running vicedump on the server would integrate with AMANDA, and also enable one to restore coda bits into a regular filesystem in an emergency. Greg Troxel <gdt_at_ir.bbn.com>Received on 2001-01-31 08:58:07