strange dump (dark matter?)

[Dave McCammon]

--- Ryan Sandridge <ryan at sandridge.org> wrote:
> Hello all.  I decided it was time to start doing
> backups.  On Oct 7th, 
> I did a full dump of /usr filesystem (among others),
> as such:
> # dump -0uan -f - /usr | gzip -7 >
> /tmp/20031007-usr-lvl0.dump.gz
> 
> This seemed to work as expected, here is some info
> about the gz file:
> % gzip -l 20031007-usr-lvl0.dump.gz
> compressed  uncompr. ratio uncompressed_name
> 507027476 1590855680  68.1% 20031007-usr-lvl0.dump
> 
> Everything so far so good.  Today (Oct 22) I tried
> an incremental dump, 
> as such:
> # dump -5uan -f - /usr | gzip -7 >
> /tmp/20031022-usr-lvl5.dump.gz
> 
> Here is where I start getting confused.  While my
> other incremental 
> backups today (/ and /var), seemed to be fine, the
> /usr dump was huge.  
> Here is info about the gz file:
> % gzip -l 20031022-usr-lvl5.dump.gz
> compressed  uncompr. ratio uncompressed_name
> 527112624 543600640   3.0% 20031022-usr-lvl5.dump
> 
> This incremental backup is larger than the original
> full dump.  Also 
> notice that the compression ratio was 3.0%.  When
> examining the list of 
> files dumped, I don't see anything that could lead
> to a file size like 
> this.  A rough count shows that the backup should
> have been roughly 
> 11MB uncompressed, compared to the 518MB
> uncompressed.  I've tried 
> reading up on both dump and gzip, but haven't found
> a clue.  Perhaps 
> I've discovered dark matter.
> 
> Thanks,
>    Ryan

Where is the file of your first backup stored?
Did it get backed up as part of the incremental
backup?


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