From: Chris Lee Subject: Shorten the backup process? Date: Sat, 09 Oct 2010 21:35:32 +0100 Message-ID: <4CB0D214.1070301@cybericom.co.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org Return-path: Received: from mk-outboundfilter-5-a-2.mail.uk.tiscali.com ([212.74.114.4]:47659 "EHLO mk-outboundfilter-5-a-2.mail.uk.tiscali.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1757171Ab0JIUpA (ORCPT ); Sat, 9 Oct 2010 16:45:00 -0400 Sender: linux-ext4-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: Hi All, I hope this to bee food for thought as I am not able to code such a thing nor am I in need of such a thing but it seemed like a good idea when it struck me, so; When an filesystem is snap shotted it is a function of the running filesystem to provide the data in that snapshot. (or is that lvms doing?) Most users who use snapshots for backup are going to mount the snap shot and then tar it up. Would it be a good idea to provide a virtual file through something like the sysfs that is a tar representation of the snapshot so that a backup can just copy the tar file off as needed? Thanks for reading, Regards, Chris.