[SOLVED] what are the practical results of copying a mounted filesystem image?

newbiesforever · 05-10-2020, 10:27 AM

When I image and copy an entire partition, I sometimes forget to unmount the partition first, and the system effectively warns me, with:

Code:

Running e2image on a R/W mounted filesystem can result in an
inconsistent image which will not be useful for debugging purposes.
Use -f option if you really want to do that.

I just wondered what the result would look like if I did add -f to copy the image without unmounting it. I have assumed the image on the target would be corrupted; but...now I note that "will not be useful for debugging purposes" implies that that might be the only problem. If so, I don't care--I wasn't going to debug anything.

shruggy · 05-10-2020, 10:51 AM

When a partition is being unmounted all cached data get flushed to it. Besides, unmounting a partition guarantees that no process continues to write data onto it.

pan64 · 05-10-2020, 11:19 AM

additionally the copy of a living partition may be corrupted. That means it is useless, contains invalid data (=inconsistent). you might need to run fsck before usage and also you might expect data loss on that image. But occasionally it may work without any trouble.