xfsdump on mounted filesystem

[Jan Schulze]

Hi all,

is it advisable to use xfsdump on a mounted file system, or am I likely to be running into problems when doing so? 

The Wikipedia article on XFS states "The xfsdump utility backs up an XFS filesystem in inode order, and in contrast to traditional UNIX file systems which must be unmounted before dumping to guarantee a consistent dump image, XFS file systems can be dumped while the file system is in use."

However, I have not found any other reference, that supports this statement. Also, I do not really understand, what "backing up in inode orde" means. Anybody can clear this up?


Best Regards,
Jan