Hi

i was wundering what the best program is to use for backing up linux? i mainly want to back up all the user directroys and keep a back up of them,

would it be just as simple to right a cron job to tar all the folders i want and then move it to some where? and take a tar of my intire system and just copy it over if sometink did go wrong so i can rgith back to my setup and then update the use folders as i need.

i know my server will never go down unless hardware falt with is case of most linux/unix machines going down, but back ups are nice for socurity resons.

what do u use thats free and simple?
its only on a 80gb drive and a tape drive is out of the questions cant quite aford one!!
thx
kudos

I used to use tar, but I changed to zip because zip is alot faster if you want to get a file from the end of the archive and it's on most windows computers, useful if you don't have a linux machine around to restore the data.

Try on of those, i am using faubackup it is nice program!

server:~# apt-cache search file backup

adduser - Add and remove users and groups
afbackup - Client-Server Backup System (Server side)
afbackup-client - Client-Server Backup System (Client side)
afio - Archive file manipulation program.
amanda-client - Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver (Client)
amanda-server - Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver (Server)
casio - Backup utility for the CASIO diary.
cpbk - a mirroring utility for backing up your files
cproto - generate C function prototypes and convert function definitions
dump - 4.4bsd dump and restore for ext2 filesystems
faubackup - Backup System using a Filesystem for Storage
filetraq - Small utility to keep track of changes in config files.
kbackup - A console single host backup solution for various media
kleandisk - a file cleanup and backup tool for KDE
libopenafs-dev - The AFS distributed filesystem- development libraries
mirrordir - duplicate a directory by making a minimal set of changes
mondo - System to backup your filesystem to CDs
multicd - Backup your data to CD-R/CD-RW
openafs-client - The AFS distributed filesystem- client support
openafs-dbserver - The AFS distributed filesystem- database server
openafs-fileserver - The AFS distributed filesystem- file server
openafs-kpasswd - The AFS distributed filesystem- old password changing
openafs-krb5 - The AFS distributed filesystem- Kerberos 5 Integration
openafs-modules-source - The AFS distributed filesystem- Module Sources
pdumpfs - a daily backup system similar to Plan9's dumpfs
rdiff-backup - Backup program to use deltas for history
taper - Full-screen system backup utility.
tar - GNU tar
tilp - A TI calculator <-> PC communication program for X
tob - Small yet powerful program for tape oriented backups.
xfsdump - Administrative utilities for the XFS filesystem

i love Apt- in Debian