Backup Software for Linux
Rob Kolstad, CEO of BSDi, told a story at the 1996 Australian Unix User Group national conference:
A BSD OS customer had telephoned up.
(customer:) "My hard disc has just crashed, and I need to get the data off it."
"What does it say on page 4 of the manual?"
(reading) "If you do not have a good backup, you will be sorry."
"Do you have a backup?"
"No"
"Are you sorry?"
"Yes!"
"There you are, then. Works as advertised!"
Linux backup software options can be broken into four categories:
Non-tape options, all sorts. Not otherwise addressed here.
Homebrewed script setups front-ending tar, cpio, afio, dump/restore.
Suggest digging through ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/backup/ .
Proprietary packages:
- Arkeia (Arkeia Corporation, formerly Knox Software)
- BackupEdge (Microlite Corporation)
- Backup Exec Linux Agent (Veritas Software)
- Backup Express (Syncsort)
- Backup Professional (Unitrends Software Corporation)
- BrightStore, formerly ArcserveIT (Computer Associates)
- BRU (TOLIS Group, http://www.tolisgroup.com/, took over rights to BRU from defunct EST=Enhanced Software Technologies, http://www.estinc.com/ See also: XBRU, BRU-Pro, QuickStart, BRU 2000, BRU Personal Edition)
- CommVault Galaxy (CommVault Systems)
- CTAR / CTAR:NET (Unitrends Software Corporation)
- EaseBackup Professional (KieSoft)
- Lone-tar & Backup Professional (Lone Star Software / Cactus International)
- NetVault (BakBone Software, Ltd., formerly NetVault, Ltd.)
- Networker (Legato. Look around for the "unsupported Linux client" directory. Server requires Sun Solaris/etc. or MS-Windows NT.)
- NovaNET (NovaStor Corporation)
- Omniback II client for Linux (part of HP OpenView for HP/UX)
- PC Parachute (Unitrends Software Corporation)
- PerfectBackup+ (Merlin Software Technologies, Inc.)
- SAMS:Alexandria (Computer Associates)
- TapeWare Universal (Yosemite Software)
- Time Navigator (Atempo, formerly Quadratec Software)
- Uniback (Orbit Software)
- Arkeia (Arkeia Corporation, formerly Knox Software)
Open-source packages
Mirrored at http://linuxmafia.com/pub/linux/backup (exceptions: amanda, kbackup, mondo, taper, GNU tar — removed on account of excess bandwidth draw):
afbackup, Albert Flugel's Backup, Client/server backup management system & engine. Can use mtx or stctl to control tape changers.
http://www.afbackup.org/afio, an improved file-archiver/copier/manipulator, compatible with cpio but much more resistant to file corruption. Command-line tool. By Mark Brukhartz, Koen Holtman (koen@win.tue.nl) et al.
ftp://metalab1.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/backup
, ftp://ftp.win.tue.nl/pub/linux-local/tbackup/Amanda (Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver): Excellent front end to either tar or dump/restore.
http://www.amanda.org/Bacula: Excellent network-based, modular, client/server backup, recovery, and verification suite for Linux and FreeBSD, supporting a variety of media including tape and disk. Much simpler to master than Amanda, and supports backup to multiple volumes. Administrative utilities can run either from shell / tty interface, a GNOME front-end, and a wxWidgets front-end. Offers Win32 file agent.
http://www.bacula.org/B.U.R.T. (Backup and Recovery Tool): Nice Tcl/tk front-end. Uses its own back-end engine.
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~jmelski/burt/cpio: General utility for cp'ing IO streams including groups of files, and thus for backing up / moving / copying / manipulating them. Command-line tool with infamously obscure syntax.
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/cpio/Datbkr: Fast, light script front-end for tar.
http://www.psychosis.com/datbkr/ext2-filesystem dump/restore utilities, By Stelian Pop. Please note that this utility is filesystem-dependent, and also that it gives truly reliable results only if the filesystem isn't mounted.
http://dump.sourceforge.net/FlexBackup, Script for dump/restore, afio, tar, cpio, zip/unzip. By Edwin Huffstutler (flexbackup@home/com)
http://members-http-3.rwc1.sfba.home.net/flexbackup/gzip: file compresser/decompressor. By Jean-Loup Gailly (gloop@chorus.fr).
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/Hdup: A front-end to GNU tar to do backups, optionally cryptographically secure across the network to remote hosts. By R. Gieben.
http://www.miek.nl/projects/hdup/hdup.shtmlhostdump.sh: Sophisticated shell script. Will use dump, cpio, or tar, in that order of preference.
http://www.storagemountain.com/hostdump.htmlInstall Backup: Successor to Tob. Good. By Donncha O Caoimh.
http://cork.linux.ie/projects/installbackup/Kbackup: ncurses-driven (or command-line) front-end to afio or tar. By Karsten Ballueder (Ballueder@usa.net).
http://kbackup.sourceforge.net/KDat: Nice Qt/X11 front-end to tar. From the KDE Project.
http://sunsite.dk/qweb/kdat/Linux Backup (GTK-based): By Patrick Lambert (drow@post.com).
http://www.linsupport.com/sw/linuxbackup.htmlMondo: Comprehensive backup / recovery toolkit. Supports NFS or CDR[W] as backup targets, in addition to tape. By Hugo Rabson.
http://www.mondorescue.org/mt-st: mt-based (Mount Tape) utility with support for Linux SCSI tape (/dev/stXX) ioctls, and including an stinit program to initialise tape devices. By Kai Makisara (Kai.Makisara@metla.fi).
ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/backup/MTX: Originally created by the late Leonard Zubkoff as an enhanced verseion of GNU "mt" (mount tape).
http://mtx.sourceforge.net/pax: A POSIX-compliant utility capable of handling both tar and cpio archives. Can construct incremental archives using vdelta algorithm. Handles gzip and compress archives upon input and output.
ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/utils/compress/rkbackup: A script front-end for dump, suitable for use with cron. By Richard Keech.
http://people.redhat.com/rkeech/#rkbackuprsync: Flexible, easy, fast file mirroriing/copying/moving utility for the command line.
ftp://rsync.samba.org/pub/rsync/star: Highly optimised version of tar. (Double-buffered FIFO streaming, does sophisticated diffs.) By Jorg Schilling.
ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix/star/Taper: Self-contained, ncurses-oriented backup system. By Yusuf Nagree (yusuf@omen.net.au).
http://taper.e-survey.net.au/tar: Tape ARchiver and file copying/ moving / manipulating utility for the command line. Two optional patches add support for bzip2 compression.
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/tar/tarfix: Tools for processing damaged tar archive file. By sewilco@fieldday.mn.org (Scot E. Wilcoxon).
ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/backup/Tob (Tape Oriented Backup): Front-end to tar or afio. By Karel Kubat. No longer maintained.
Final version is mirrored at http://linuxmafia.com/pub/linux/utilities-general/ , as it is vanished from the primary ftp://ftp.icce.rul.nl/pub/unix/ site.Unix Backup Tool (UT): Full-screen front-end management utility for command-line backup tools like dump. Supports defined backup sets. Requires Tcl/Tk and Expect. By Gilbert Robert (Gilbert.Robert@issco.unige.ch).
http://issco-www.unige.ch/staff/robert/ubt/WiredBackup: Makes an incremental tar backup, compresses it with bzip2, and symmetrically encrypts it using gpg. The changed backup data is then transfered to an ftp server. By Marcus Schiesser (webmaster@unc.de).
http://www-pr.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/c/mitarbeiter/schiessedownloads/wiredbackup.tgz. Reachable via http://freshmeat.net/projects/netbackup/ .XFS-filesystem dump/restore utils:
ftp://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs/download/
Good informational pages:
http://www.storagemountain.com/ was: http://www.backupcentral.com/
http://linuxmafia.com/~karsten/Linux/FAQs/backups.html Karsten M Self's
Linux Backup FAQ
http://linuxmafia.com/faq//Hardware/tape-backup-types.html taxonomy of tape drives/media
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Admin/backup-strategy.html fallacies and pitfalls of backup