From: utzoo!henry Newsgroups: net.bugs.4bsd,net.bugs.v7 Title: Re: problems with dump(8) Article-I.D.: utzoo.2293 Posted: Tue Jul 20 15:44:12 1982 Received: Tue Jul 20 15:44:12 1982 I can't speak for the 4BSD version of dump, but two independent analyses that I know about (one mine) have concluded that using V6 or V7 dump(8) on a live filesystem is not safe, period. physics!gill's problem sounds like the first one we found: going in through the /dev entries for a file system bypasses all that nice machinery that makes sure everybody always has a consistent view of things like inodes and indirect blocks.