I'm looking for recommendations for a backup program that meets these criteria:

* Backup a running system
* GUI or at least interactive interface
* Use TAR or other mechanism to preserve attributes when saving to NTFS drive
* Primary usage: full/incremental backups
* Compatible with/available for Debian

Optional features:
* Ability to restore individual files
* Ability to create image backup (could be another program)
* Ability to save as an iso

I'm having trouble identifying a program that meets even the first two criteria. Any suggestions?

Hi,

I think backuppc meets all your criteria (if web interface counts as a gui), and the first of your optional features. For more information:
Evo2.

Thanks. I had looked at backuppc and may not have understood what I was looking at (plus the setup is a little out of my depth, particularly using a USB-connected drive rather than a network drive, and I didn't find any documentation that addressed the ability to self-backup a running system). I'll have to look at it again and dig deeper.

EDIT: The documentation says it won't work with NTFS and requires a network server. And just when I thought I would be forced to hunker down and learn something new.

Hi,

network server is not required, you can backup to a local file system (I know this for a fact because I do it). I didn't know about NTFS. Can you point me to where you got this information?

Evo2.

I went to the backuppc online documentation: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/faq/...l#Requirements
"BackupPC requires:.... A linux, solaris, or unix based server", etc.
"But windows based FAT and NTFS file systems will not work."

I didn't read through the entire manual. Are there instructions for setting up with a local drive? Will it backup a running system (without excluding everything that is in use)? So far, this is the only program anyone has mentioned. If NTFS is the only problem, I could probably create a partition somewhere and format that to something else.

Thanks.

Hi,
It also states

Ok. Is it essential for you to put your backups on NTFS? Why can't you use a different filesystem?

It is basically no different. You have multiple different options for transferring the data from the client to the server (which can be the same machine). See http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/faq/...ackup-a-client and note that rsync, tar etc work between devices on the same machine.

Yes.
There are many other backup options, but I don't which of them meet all your criteria.

If I were you I'd keep as far away from NTFS as possible.

Evo2.

Tell that to Bill Gates. I'm still using his hardware.

Thanks for all the info.