Looking for backup software of complete system

[Randy Kelsoe]

Mike Noble wrote:

> I just used dump to move the OS from one partition to another
> one and it worked just fine.  Now I will say that this was
> done with Mandrake Linux dump, but dump should be the same
> for either Mandrake, Fedora, debian....).
>
> Mike

Here is what Linus said about dump back in April of 2001:

"...Note that dump simply won't work reliably at all even in 2.4.x: the
buffer cache and the page cache (where all the actual data is) are not
coherent. This is only going to get even worse in 2.5.x, when the
directories are moved into the page cache as well.

So anybody who depends on "dump" getting backups right is already playing
russian rulette with their backups. It's not at all guaranteed to get the
right results - you may end up having stale data in the buffer cache that
ends up being "backed up"......

Right now, the cpio/tar/xxx solutions are definitely the best ones, and
will work on multiple filesystems (another limitation of "dump"). Whatever
problems they have, they are still better than the _guaranteed_(*)  data
corruptions of "dump".

However, it may be that in the long run it would be advantageous to have a
"filesystem maintenance interface" for doing things like backups and
defragmentation.."

		Linus

That was 3 and a half years ago, so things may have changed. I would hope so, since dump is still part of the distro.