Hi there...

I am going to backup certain folders on my system on a weekly basis to DAT, currently I have set up a cronjob which will carry out the following command:

tar -cf /dev/st0 /etc /boot /home /var/www

I am only really interested in the above folders and NOT a complete system backup.

My question is simply, should I stop httpd? and then restart after backup is completed.

The reason I ask is that I intend on copying the www folder which contains a lot of data files which could in thoery get accessed and changed during the backup.

Likewise, if you have any users on the system at all during the backup, files in /home could get changed too. This may not be practical, but if you are concerned about the contents of any of those directories changing as the backup runs, then you might want to consider basically shutting down everything until backup is finished. Depending on how many users would be affected, that may or may not be realistic, but I'd at least consider it. -- J.W.