What Software Do You Use for Unix Backups?

jregel asks: "Linus has stated that dump should not be considered a reliable backup program, and both tar and cpio have their limitations. So what are Slashdot readers doing for backing up Linux servers and workstations? (you do backup, right?)" Given this bit of news, have you used anything other than the standard Unix staple to back up your Linux boxes? If you were forced off of tar, cpio and dump, what would you use as a replacement?

Comments

Roll Your Own

[JimR]

I wrote my own (Perl) script, that copies all my "important" files (basically stuff in my home directory that can't be reconstructed by other means and all the system config files) to a new directory tree (using cpio) it then burns the copied tree to CD-RW and verifies the CD against the copied tree.

I operate a 4 disc system, so I always have the last four backups on CD and I keep the copied trees around (uncompressed) for as long as I have disk space. So far I've not needed the CDs (I store 2 of them offsite in case of disaster) but the copied filesystem trees have come in useful a couple of times.

The only drawback of this is it's not appropriate for backing up huge quantites of data (like lots of audio or video files) as the CD media is quite limited in size - but when rewritable holographic storage comes along I'll be able to just change my function that decides which files are "important".

I cannot be forced off tar

[mnmn]

They say tar has its limitations. I really dont understand.

Ive worked with different unixen and Linux distros, so I just dont want to be dependant on something that isnt installed by default everywhere. tar already has a VERY well known format and execution parameters.

Ive lost my fair share of data to buggy harddrives and dumb mistakes like pulling off the ide cable while the system is running. So cron does daily backups using tar cfj using a file that has a list of other files to be backed up. This way I dont have to backup the whole partition. To restore a certain file, just tar xvfj backup2.tar.bz2 /pathtofile --root=/

The cron setup renames backup.bz2 to backup2.bz2 and removes backup2.bz2 so I have the data for the past two days. Beside incremental backup which I dont need due to this setup, what else could I need? And by the way the backup.bz2 is copied off onto an NFS share elsewhere incase my whole RAID setup crashes, or the XFS filesystem bombs out. This setup can be replicated onto FreeBSD Solaris and many others.

TSM

[duffbeer703]

Tivoli Storage Manager is the only "backup solution" that I have ever seen that truly works well without alot of tweaking and twiddling.

I've worked at places using Legato and Amanda, where restoring from backup was an unreliable and error-prone process more likely to be a waste of time than anything else.

TSM is not cheap, but is worth every penny. We have one full time and one part time employee handle the backup/restore jobs for about 2000 servers. Try that with Legato or Amanda.