Why idle backups?? (was Re: Looking for shell script for backup on BSD 4.3)

[Craig Campbell]

In article <32777 at sparkyfs.istc.sri.com> zwicky at pterodactyl.erg.sri.com.UUCP (Elizabeth Zwicky) writes:
>In article <1990Oct29.225451.29481 at usenet.ins.cwru.edu> edguer at charlie.CES.CWRU.Edu (Aydin Edguer) writes:
 
>You can't unmount an active file system except by rebooting the
>machine - so if you need to guarantee the unmount will succeed, you're
>back to rebooting, and fiddling with your rc files. (This should
>no longer be true in BSD 4.4 release, but that's not going to do you
>much good.)
 
>	Elizabeth Zwicky


Wait a minute! Halt!  Wow!!

While it is true that you can't unmount an active file system (that's sort of
part of the definition), you can MAKE a file system inactive.  The fuser(1M)
command (sys V) will kill (if requested) all processes using the specified
resource (file system).  Once the resource is inactive, it can be unmounted.

Obviously, one would not want to attempt this on the root (or boot) file
system.


craig