A backup problem

[Kenneth Porter]

--On Saturday, July 31, 2004 11:16 AM -0400 Mike <mjwestkamper at weiinc.com> 
wrote:

> I've tried TAR and SMB only to create ever increasing volumes. The
> problem I think is that my attempts are chasing the links instead of
> simply backing up the links. I simply want to create a backup that I can
> copy back, untar or the like, if I must re-create the system.

Have you considered dump? It backs up ext2/ext3 filesystems at the inode 
level, by accessing the raw disk device. The matching restore command will 
restore the "tape" (backup file) to the current directory, typically root 
if you're doing a full restore, but it could be an arbitrary directory if 
you're trying to recover a lost file. The latest stable version, 0.4b37, is 
in Rawhide (Fedora development directory) awaiting approval to release to 
updates. I'm using that now and do a nightly backup to a Samba-mounted 
Windows share.