tar cvf proc.tar /proc

[Jung.S.H]

OS : RedHat Linux (Kernel 2.4)
model : HP
I run command "tar cvf proc.tar /proc"
Then system is rebooting ...
what is the problem?
I have no idea.

How do I find out the cause for the rebooting?

Tell me the reason Why reboot the system?

[Ivan Ferreira]

Check your /var/log/messages files for some clue. You don't need to backup the /proc file system, anyway, I think that the system shouldn't reboot if you try to do that, you only should get errors.

[Vitaly Karasik_1]

can you reproduce this problem?
agree with Ivan - this tar command shouldn't cause crash/reboot.

[Uwe Zessin]

I don't have an RH system to look at, but on a SuSe Professional, the /proc tree includes a mapping to memory (/proc/kcore), so your TAR file might get larger that you expect...

[Ivan Ferreira]

I just tried the tar and it ends with errors, the system should not crash, but I agree that there are some files, like the kcore that are very large.

Does the system always crash?

[Matti_Kurkela]

I seem to recall that this was a known bug, fixed at some point of the 2.4 kernel series.

If you're using some version of RedHat Enterprise Linux, are you up to date on patches? If you use a RedHat 7.3 or 9, consider applying the patches created by the Fedora Legacy project:
http://www.fedoralegacy.org/

[Jung.S.H]

I have heard that /proc filesystem must not tar command from hp engineear.
Because /proc filesytem is virtual file-system.
"# tar â cvf /tmp/proc_backup /proc "
command cause system deadlock

[Vitaly Karasik_1]

AFAIK :
even /proc is virtual FS and we don't need to backup it (except for snapshoot linux box state), there is no problem to tar /proc FS. And, of course, linux doesn't crash during /proc taring.

And I run tar for /proc a few times right now without problems.

[George Liu_4]

Problem seems in the function/library calls when you run tar on /proc directory. Some function/library call could trigger the kernel panic/reboot. You shouldn't be surprised.
You won't be surprised if the system reboot after you type in
echo r >/proc/sysrq-trigger