Backup tools Available for Debian Linux and Other Linux Distributions
afbackup
Client-Server Backup System (Server side)
This is a client-server backup system offering several workstations a centralized backup to a special backup server. Backing up only one computer is easily possible, too. Any streaming device can be used for writing the data to it, usually this will be a tape device. Writing backups is normally done sequentially: The next writing to tape goes to the end of the previous write no matter where you have restored from in the meantime.
Features:
- Authentication of the client is performed before it can take over control
- Access restriction for the streamer device -> security
- Client-side per-file compression -> reliability
- Data stream is written to tape in pieces -> fast finding of files
- Tape position logging for each file
- Tape capacity is fully used
- Full / incremental backups
- Raw partitions can be backed up
- Client and Server buffering for maximal throughput is done
Note: Tk is required if you want to use the graphical configuration tool instead of the text configuration tool.
Downloads and Documentation
http://sourceforge.net/projects/afbackup/
backup-manager
command-line backup tool for GNU Linux
This is a backup program, designed to help you make daily archives of your file system.
Written in bash and perl, it can make tar, tar.gz, tar.bz, and zip archives and can be run in a parallel mode with different configuration files.
Archives are kept for a given number of days and the upload system can use ftp or scp to transfer the generated archives to a list of remote hosts.
The configuration file is very simple and basic and gettext is used for internationalization.
Downloads and Documentation
http://www.backup-manager.org/
backup2l
low-maintenance backup/restore tool for mountable media
backup2l [backup-too-l] is a tool for autonomously generating, maintaining and restoring backups on a mountable file system (e. g. hard disk). In a default installation, backups are created regularly by a cron script.
The main design goals are low maintenance effort, efficiency, transparency and robustness. All control files are stored together with the archives on the backup device, and their contents are mostly self-explaining. Hence, a user can - if necessary - browse the files and extract archives manually.
backup2l features differential backups at multiple hierarchical levels. This allows to generate small incremental backups at short intervals while at the same time, the total number of archives only increases logarithmically with the number of backups since the last full backup.
An open driver architecture allows to use virtually any archiving program as a backend. Built-in drivers support .tar.gz, .tar.bz2, or .afioz files. Further user-defined drivers can be added.
An integrated split-and-collect function allows to comfortably transfer all or selected archives to a set of CDs or other removable media.
Downloads and Documentation
http://backup2l.sourceforge.net/
backupninja
lightweight, extensible meta-backup system
Backupninja lets you drop simple config files in /etc/backup.d to coordinate system backups. Backupninja is a master of many arts, including incremental remote filesystem backup, mysql backup, and ldap backup. By creating simple drop-in handler scripts, backupninja can learn new skills. Backupninja is a silent flower blossom death strike to lost data.
Downloads and Documentation
http://dev.riseup.net/backupninja/
backuppc
high-performance, enterprise-grade system for backing up PCs
BackupPC is disk based and not tape based. This particularity allows features not found in any other backup solution:
* Clever pooling scheme minimizes disk storage and disk I/O.Identical files across multiple backups of the same or different PC are stored only once (using hard links), resulting in substantial savings in disk storage and disk writes.
* Optional compression provides additional reductions in storage.CPU impact of compression is low since only new files (those not already in the pool) need to be compressed.
* A powerful http/cgi user interface allows administrators to view log files,configuration, current status and allows users to initiate and cancel backups and browse and restore files from backups very quickly.
* No client-side software is needed. On WinXX the smb protocol is used.On linux or unix clients, rsync or tar (over ssh/rsh/nfs) can be used
* Flexible restore options. Single files can be downloaded from any backup directly from the CGI interface. Zip or Tar archives for selected files or directories can also be downloaded from the CGI interface.
* BackupPC supports mobile environments where laptops are only intermittently connected to the network and have dynamic IP addresses (DHCP).
* Flexible configuration parameters allow multiple backups to be performed in parallel.
* and more to discover in the manual...
Downloads and Documentation
http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/
cdbackup
CD-R(W) backup utility
cdbackup and cdrestore are a pair of utilities designed to facilitiate streaming backup to and from CD-R(W) disks.Specificially, they were designed to work with dump/restore, but tar/cpio/whatever you want should work, so long as it writes to stdout for backups and reads from stdin for restores.
Downloads and Documentation
http://www.muempf.de/
dvbackup
backup tool using MiniDV camcorders
Dvbackup hides the data it receives on standard input in a perfectly legal DV (digital video) stream. This allows you to use your DV camcorder and your DV cardridges as a potent mass storage system. Obviously, your system and your camcorder have to be connected via IEEE1394 (aka Firewire, iLink).
Current digital camcorders can save approximately 13 GB of data on those tiny DV cartridges at a speed of 3.6 MB/sec. That's faster than most DAT streamers which only work at 1 MB/sec or less. dvbackup can not use all of the data, but 10 GB should be good enough for everyone.
To bring the data on tape, you have to use an additional utility, called dvconnect, which is included in libdv-bin.
This packages also contains rsbep, an implementation of a special version of the Reed-Solomon FEC (forward error correction) algorithm. rsbep also spreads the bytes of the resulting blocks out to give some protection against burst errors (e.g from tape-recordings). It should be used in a pipe together with dvbackup (before dvbackup while encoding and after it while decoding). rsbep should be sufficient to make the LP mode of your camcorder usable. This mode, which puts about 50% more data on the cardridge would otherwise be too error-prone. rsbep is the fast implementation in i386 assembler, rsbepC uses pure C and is significantly slower (about ten times).
Downloads and Documentation
http://dvbackup.sourceforge.net/
faubackup
Backup System using a Filesystem for Storage
This Program uses a filesystem on a hard drive for incremental and full backups. All Backups can easily be accessed by standard filesystem tools (ls, find, grep, cp, ...)
Later Backups to the same filesystem will automatically be incremental, as unchanged files are only hard-linked with the existing version of the file.
Downloads and Documentation
http://faubackup.sourceforge.net/
flexbackup
Flexible backup tool for small to medium sized installations
Flexbackup is a flexible backup tool that works well for small to medium sized tasks for which solutions like amanda are overkill.
It features:
* Easy configuration
* Uses afio, dump, GNU tar, cpio, star, pax, lha, or zip archivers
* Full and numbered levels of incremental backup (similar to "dump")
* Compression and buffering options for all backup types
* Handles remote filesystems with ssh/rsh; no special services required
* Writes to tapes, on-disk archive files, or on-disk directory trees
* Keeps a table of contents so you know what archives are on each tape
* Extensive logging options
Downloads and Documentation
http://www.edwinh.org/flexbackup/
ibackup
Automated backups (even remote) of machine configurations
This software simplifies the task of backing up the system configuration files (those under /etc) for UNIX systems (Solaris, *BSD, Linux). You can run the program from any directory and it will by default save the (maybe compressed) tarball to /root.
It is possible to encrypt the tarball, to upload the tarball to some other host and run the backup automated in a cronjob
Downloads and Documentation
http://www.linuks.mine.nu/ibackup/
rdiff-backup
incremental backups using binary deltas
rdiff-backup is a script that backs up one directory to another. The target directory ends up a copy of the source directory,but extra reverse diffs are stored in a special subdirectory of that target directory, so you can still recover files lost some time ago. The idea is to combine the best features of a mirror and an incremental backup. rdiff-backup also preserves subdirectories, symlinks, special files, permissions, uid/gid ownership (if it is running as root), and modification times.
Finally, rdiff-backup can operate in a bandwidth efficient manner over a pipe, like rsync. Thus you can use rdiff-backup and ssh to securely back a hard drive up to a remote location, and only the differences will be transmitted.
Downloads and Documentation
http://www.nongnu.org/rdiff-backup/
slbackup
Skolelinux Backup system
A backup system designed to back up multiple clients to a server. slbackup uses rdiff-backup as the underlying backup software.
Clients can be the host installing this package, or other hosts reachable via a SSH connection (using SSH keys). The host storing the backup data can be the host installing this package or another host reachable via a SSH connection (also using SSH keys).
Downloads and Documentation
http://www.skolelinux.org/portal/index_html
storebackup
fancy compressing managing checksumming hard-linking cp -rua Copies directory hierarchies recursively into another location, by date (e.g. /home/ => /var/bkup/2002.12.13_04.27.56/).
Permissions are preserved, so users with access to the backup directory can recover their files themselves.
File comparisons are done with MD5 checksums, so no changes go unnoticed.
Hard-links unchanged backuped files to old versions and identical files within the backuped tree.
Compresses large files (that don't match exclusion patterns).
Manages backups and removes old ones.
Downloads and Documentation
http://sourceforge.net/projects/storebackup
rsync
fast remote file copy program (like rcp)
rsync is a program that allows files to be copied to and from remote machines in much the same way as rcp. It has many more options than rcp, and uses the rsync remote-update protocol to greatly speed up file transfers when the destination file already exists.
The rsync remote-update protocol allows rsync to transfer just the differences between two sets of files across the network link.
Downloads and Documentation
http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/
