The Saturday 2003-11-22 at 18:15 +0100, Örn Hansen wrote:
Well, it all depends on where you intend to do the backup. If you have a scsi tape media, then there are tons of backup programs to use. Everywhere from dump, to ... well, you get the picture. Iff, on the other hand, you have a similar setup to most users. You have a normal CD-RW and want to use it to backup your home drive, and btw. there's no need to backup the system, except for the changes to the original system, which can be done best with SuSE's backup tool. You can make it write the files, already prepared for burning to a CD. If you have lot of diskspace, this can also be your normal backup tool
It is an incomplete tool, at least on SuSE 8.2. - It doesn't save all configuration files, only those that existed already on the rpms and were modified: thus, new configuration files are not updated. - It doesn't save the rpm patches. - It can be configured to save the rest, but that means _everything_ not on the rpms (the SuSE dvd). - You can configure paths not to save - but the configuration is not saved for the next run. - It creates a copy of everything that is going to be saved, in /tmp, not checking if there is enough space, and not asking for an alternative destination. If space is insufficient, it will crash after _hours_ of process. - Output is a big tar file, compressed, made of one tar per package. It is known that a backup media defect will render the full tar.gz file useless. There are more robust formats. - The process is horribly slow, even before starting to create the tar itself, even on a fast computer. The process can not be stopped and continued later - for example, if it crashes for lack of space, you can not reuse the list of files. - You can browse the list of files to be saved; but this list can not be processed externally. There is not a gui tool (even a text gui) allowing to browse paths, see sizes and dates, comparing to the "real" tree, to add or remove files from the selection list. It is a good idea, but incomplete. I use it, so I can complain :-) I have to compare these backup tools with the old pctools backups for old dos, from the eighties, and... they doesn't reach the level. I'm still waiting for something as fast and reliable as that old software.
To backup your home directory, I suggest cdbkup. It's a sourceforge project, and does full and incrimental backups to a CD. I used it to backup my home directories, before I made an upgrade to SuSE 9.0.
I'll have a look... -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson