Anyone have any suggestions on what the simplest way to run a full bru backup and test is? I want to verify my files are okay without having to do a whole system restore. Anyone have any experience with this.

I don't kno if this will help, but give a looking ova:

http://www.insecure.org/sploits/linux.bru.perms.html

Yes try this:-

bru -cvZBOVR -L "Full-20031205" -f /dev/st0 /home /opt /var /etc

What this does is copy to tape /home /opt /var/ etc, if you want a complete backup do:-

bru -cvZBOVR -L "Full-20031205" -f /dev/st0 /

BE AWARE that c=create archive, v = verify, Z is compress, B = unattended, O= overwrite tape contents -R Exclude remotely mounted filesystems - -V Display execution summary at end of operation

This works to my Seagate STT28000N perfectly every time.

What I cannot get to work is either xbru or CD/DVD backup.
Anyway as I am happy with shell commands it ain't urgent but I want to see xbru in action and I also want command-line backups to DVD to work!

Any ideas?

Another thing you can try is Mondo. Here is some blurb from "Tech Republic":

Back up your system with Mondo

Backing up your system is extremely important, but having usable backups is even more vital. If your server or workstation has a hardware failure and you need to reconstruct the machine, restoring from homegrown backup solutions can be painful and time-consuming.

A solution called Mondo can help alleviate some of this pain. It creates a full system backup of your machine in any form you like, including direct to CD, ISO images, etc.

When you burn these ISO images to CD, they become bootable restore CDs. If you have a problem with your system, you can simply insert the first CD of the backup set, boot from it, and you'll have a variety of options for how to restore your data.

With Mondo, instead of reinstalling the OS and then applying backup files on top of it to reconstruct your previous system, you can take the snapshot you have on CD and build the system back to where it was when you performed the backup.

Using Mondo is also very straightforward. Here's a simple way to use it:

# mondoarchive -Oi -d /home/mondo -E "/home/mondo" -l LILO -f /dev/hda

This tells Mondo to perform a full backup of the file system to ISO images and to place the resulting images in the /home/mondo directory. The -E option tells Mondo to exclude /home/mondo from the backup, which prevents backups from growing larger than necessary by backing up old backups. Finally, it tells Mondo you're using LILO as your bootloader and that the bootloader is on /dev/hda.

After Mondo creates the ISOs, you'll have a set of ISO images in /home/mondo that are ready to burn to CD. Be aware, however, that you'll need plenty of room to store the ISO images, depending largely on the size of your system.

For more information, check out the Mondo home page.

HTH
Baldrick