I have Debian lenny 505 installed but no ext2 filesystem, the "dump" package available for this distro is for ext2 only.

Is there a newer "dump" (or similar) program for ext3? reiserfs? xfs?

If there is, is there a substantial speed difference between it and rsync when backing up over the internet (if dump does it)?

Thank you for your help.

Hi -

I think the general consensus is to use some alternative to "dump/restore". Rsynch, Amanda - even tar or cpio. *Anything* but dump/restore.

AFAIK, dump restore *can* be used with ext3 ... but *not* Reiserfs or Xfs. I understand Hans Reiser has a lot of free time on his hands lately - maybe he'll make a patch.

Anyway, these links might help:

http://lists.samba.org/archive/linux...il/013360.html

http://dump.sourceforge.net/

Apples and oranges.

The basic tools are dd, dump, tar, cpio and perhaps rsync. Many other applications are built on those or have higher level functionality to begin with. Amanda, for example, uses the native tool of your choice. On Linux, most people use gnutar with Amanda, since dump is usually deprecated. On Solaris, Amanda can use ufsdump or zfs send/receive or gnutar or ....

While Amanda is built on the standard Unix/Linux paradigm, building on native tools, some higher level backup applications use their own code for traversing and copying file systems, meaning that they have to reinvent the wheel on every OS / file system they want to support.

BackupPC and several other applications are based on rsync.

Thank you both, excellent answers.