Chapter 33. Why's and When's of Backup and Restore

Table of Contents
33.1. What to backup
33.2. The tar backup program
33.3. Automating backups with tar
33.4. Restore files with tar
33.5. The dump backup program
33.6. Making backups with dump
33.7. Restoring files with dump
33.8. Backing up and restoring over the network

Many methods of performing backups with Linux exist, such as dump, tar, cpio, as well as dd that are each available by default on your Linux system. Also available are text-based utilities, such as Amanda, which is designed to add a friendlier user interface to the backup and restore procedures. Finally, commercial backup utilities are also available, such as BRU.

The procedures for performing a backup and restore will differ depending on your choice of a backup solution. For this reason we will discuss methods for performing backups with the traditional UNIX tools:

  1. tar

  2. dump which is a command-line backup tool.