[ale] backing up /var -POSTGRES & LABEL

[Paul Cartwright]

On Thursday 22 February 2007 08:37, Jeff Lightner wrote:
> 1.) ?lsof /var (or fuser /var if you don't have lsof - lsof is far
> superior in my experience - I've found some things fuser won't show you
> that lsof does.)
list open files, wow, what a thought!
beats ps -ef for sure.

> In my earlier response to your question I had noted that often going to
> single user from a multi-user run level doesn't unmount /var - however
> booting into single user shouldn't mount anything but /.

to boot into single user, you need to change the default init state... I 
remember this: /etc/inittab;

# The default runlevel is defined here
id:5:initdefault:

>
> 2.) ?You could put a label on it but it's not necessary. ?
> Personally I've never understood the fascination with labels in Linux.
> It isn't always obvious later which partition goes with which label - if
> I'm interested in the device rather than the mount point I'd just as
> soon seen that in the fstab than try to figure it out. ? I gather the
> idea is that if you see the label it helps you know it's purpose but it
> seems easy enough to figure out purpose from the partition table and
> fstab.
according to 'man fstab' using LABELS is more "robust", but it still doesn't 
explain how to MAKE a label.. ( and I like using /dev/sdb? )
  Instead  of  giving  the  device explicitly, one may indicate the (ext2 or 
xfs) filesystem that is to be mounted by its UUID or volume label  
(cf.e2label(8) or  xfs_admin(8)),  writing LABEL=<label> or UUID=<uuid>, 
e.g., `LABEL=Boot' or `UUID=3e6be9de-8139-11d1-9106-a43f08d823a6'.  This will 
make  the  system  more robust: adding or removing a SCSI disk changes the 
disk device name but not the filesystem volume label.

-- 
Paul Cartwright
Registered Linux user # 367800