7 Backing Up and Restoring an XFS File System
The xfsdump package contains the xfsdump and
xfsrestore utilities. The xfsdump command
examines the files in an XFS file system, identifies files that need to be backed up, and
copies them to the storage medium. Any backups that you create by using the
xfsdump command are portable between systems with different endian
architectures. The xfsrestore command restores a full or incremental
backup of an XFS file system. You can also restore individual files and directory hierarchies
from backups.
Note:
Unlike an LVM snapshot, which immediately creates a sparse clone
of a volume, xfsdump takes time to make a
copy of the file system data.
Backups, known as dump sessions, are recorded in an inventory database at
/var/lib/xfsdump/inventory. The inventory makes it easy to see what
backups have been taken, at which points in time, and to which devices. You can view the
inventory by either using the xfsdump -I or xfsrestore
-I commands. To interactively prune the inventory, you can use the
xfsinvutil -i command.
For more information, see the xfsdump(8), xfsrestore(8),
and xfsinvutil(8) manual pages.