Anything specific to keep in mind restoring from rsync ?

[Manish Jain]

On 08/24/17 21:58, Warren Block wrote:
> Don't use rsync for this.  If you do, be sure to add the half-dozen 
> options that preserve hard links and keep the /rescue directory from 
> growing unexpectedly.  The preferred methods are dump/restore for UFS 
> (http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/backup.html) and
> zfs send | zfs recv for ZFS.

Thanks Warren, but too late  : - )

  I did an rsync (-aAXv --exclude-from ./excludes) to backup, and then a 
reverse rsync (-aH) to restore. It worked very well for me - both for 
Linux and FreeBSD.

But there have been a few responses at freebsd-questions that 
dump/restore should be the preferred solution for this (when / has to be 
backed up, mainly owing to hard links). Next time I need a backup, I 
will use dump+restore.

But I am inclined to ask one question here : does FreeBSD actually have 
any system-installed hard links (other than . and ..) ?

Regards
Manish Jain