Backups are important under any operating system. Debian GNU/Linux
provides several different utilities that you might want to use.
Additionally, while many of these utilities were aimed at tape
backups originally, you’ll find that they are now being used for
other things. For instance, tar is being used for distributing
programs over the Internet. Some of the utilities that you’ll find
include the following:
◼ Taper is a menu-driven, easy-to-learn backup program that can
back up to a variety of media. Its limitation is that it doesn’t
handle large (4GB or larger) backups.
◼ dump is designed specifically for tapes; its main strengths are
its interface for file restores, low-level filesystem backups, and
incremental backup scheduling. Its limitations include the
inability to back up NFS or other non-ext2 filesystems and some
rather arcane defaults.
◼ GNU tar (short for Tape ARchiver) is an implementation of what
is probably the most widely used backup or archiving utility in
Linux today. It makes a good general purpose tool and can deal
with the widest variety of target media. Additionally, many
different systems can read tar files, making them highly portable.
tar’s weaknesses include a weaker incremental backup system than
dump and no interactive restore selection screen.