System Administration Guide, Volume I

Restoring Individual Files and Directories

When you back up files and directories, they are saved relative to the file system in which they belong. When you restore files and directories, ufsrestore recreates the file hierarchy in the current working directory. For example, files backed up from the /export/doc/books directory (where /export is the file system), would be saved relative to /export. In other words, the book1 file in the docs directory would be saved as ./doc/books/book1 on the tape. Later on, if you restored the ./doc/books/book1 file to the /var/tmp directory, the file would be restored to /var/tmp/doc/books/book1.

When restoring individual files and directories, it is a good idea to restore them to a temporary location, such as the /var/tmp directory. After you verify them, you can move the files to their proper locations. You can restore individual files and directories to their original locations. If you do so, be sure you are not overwriting newer files with older versions from the backup tape.


Note -

Do not restore files in the /tmp directory even temporarily. The /tmp directory is usually mounted as a TMPFS file system and TMPFS does not support UFS file system attributes such as ACLs.