As part of a larger project of reinstalling a server and moving from UFS to ZFS on my VPS, I decided I would back things up - using dump(8). Is there any way I can inspect the blob it outputs? I'd like to verify what's in there and what would be restored at a later time before wiping the current server. Searching the forums, and the greater web, has not been helpful.
Because I know falling victim to the XY-problem (https://xyproblem.info/) is often hard to spot to the user falling victim to it, I'd also take alternative suggestions for getting my current system state onto a new install (installed packages, configurations, created users, etc.), as my main target is moving towards ZFS while minimizing downtime for things I run. I did find a thread about doing this in-place (https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/ufs-to-zfs.92754/post-647819) which offers a solution using a ramdisk, but this isn't feasible considering the existing dump is larger than the available physical memory on the device. As it's a VPS, the approach of using two physical drives is unfortunately also out the window.
Because I know falling victim to the XY-problem (https://xyproblem.info/) is often hard to spot to the user falling victim to it, I'd also take alternative suggestions for getting my current system state onto a new install (installed packages, configurations, created users, etc.), as my main target is moving towards ZFS while minimizing downtime for things I run. I did find a thread about doing this in-place (https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/ufs-to-zfs.92754/post-647819) which offers a solution using a ramdisk, but this isn't feasible considering the existing dump is larger than the available physical memory on the device. As it's a VPS, the approach of using two physical drives is unfortunately also out the window.
