Unix dump
dump is an archive format that is written by Unix dump, which is a backup program that was popular in the '90s (reference?). Dump files were often written to tape. Dump files can be read using the restore tool. It appears that no specifications exist.
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Variants
There are a number of variants to the Unix dump format.
The file(1) magic definition of the format makes a distiction between 'old' and 'new' filesystem variants. Each of these can be big-endian or little endian. In addition a 16-bit subtype of the 'old' variant exists. Finally there is also a ufs2 variant (which again can be big-endian or little endian). In total this results in 7 variants of the format. According to the restore documentation, the dump file format changed in version 4.4 (of the dump tool?).
Software
Documentation
Sample files
- Unix dump format - includes some minimal sample files, created for testing magic patterns
References
- Wikipedia:Dump_(program)
- Is dump really deprecated?
- Using Dump for Linux/Unix data backup
- Restore Linux Commands
- How to Restore UFS Files Interactively
- file(1) magic for dump file format (also includes patterns for extraction of header fields)