Linux Backup Administration

[Kenneth Porter]

--On Friday, July 01, 2005 8:26 PM -0300 Pedro Fernandes Macedo 
<webmaster at margo.bijoux.nom.br> wrote:

> I'd avoid to use dump/restore.. Use tar + gzip or tar + bz2. You'll get
> good compression rates and all permissions will be kept.
> If you use dump , you're copying *everything* from the disk, including
> the data structures used to store the data and permissions on disk, which
> is a waste of space.

Oh? Dump records the files contiguously, so there's no need for any 
structures beyond the metadata in the inode (those same pesky things that 
tar saves). dump also handles sparse files (the gigantic ones that have no 
actual space allocated) correctly. (It may be that tar does that as well. I 
haven't checked recently.) dump accesses the raw disk, so it can back up 
files hidden by mount points. (OTOH, restore reads through the filesystem, 
so it can't verify files hidden by mount points.) The latest dump backs up 
extended attributes. Does tar do that? dump is capable of compression.

I backup up my system to a 2nd system weekly via dump over the network, and 
do nightly incrementals.