Backup with Pax and Afio in Linux

pax

The new, POSIX (IEEE Std 1003.2-1992, pages 380–388 (section 4.48) and pages 936–940 (section E.4.48)), all-singing, all-dancing, Portable Archive Interchange utility. pax will read, write, and list the members of an archive file, and will copy directory hierarchies. pax operation is independent of the specific archive format, and supports a wide variety of different archive formats.

pax implementations are still new and wet behind the ears.

Installing pax in Debian using the following command

# apt-get install pax

$ pax -rw -p e . newdir

or

$ find . -depth | pax -rw -p e newdir

Examples

The following example creates an archive file from all the files under the current directory.

pax -w . >/dir/archive

The following example extracts all the components of an archive file and puts them into the current directory.

pax -r * </dir/archive

The following example locates all the files that have changed in the past week (7 days) and archives them onto a diskette:

find c:/ -mtime 7 | pax -w >a:/archive

If you want more options and how to use check pax manpage here

afio

afio is a better way of dealing with cpio-format archives. It is generally faster than cpio, provides more diverse magnetic tape options and deals somewhat gracefully with input data corruption. It supports multivolume archives during interactive operation. afio can make compressed archives that are much safer than compressed tar or cpio archives. afio is best used as an "archive engine" in a backup script.

Installing afio in Debian using the following command

# apt-get install afio

$ find . -depth -print0 | afio -px -0a new-dir

If you want more options and how to use check afio manpage here