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Note and tips for backup tools.


afio

afio makes cpio POSIX.1 format archives. afio can make compressed archives that are much safer than compressed tar or cpio archives. Licensed under LGPL.

backup

Create an archive with compressed files on current path:

$ find . -print | afio -o -v -Z -L logfile archive

restore

Unpack an archive with compressed files:

$ afio -i -v -Z archive

Unpack the file foobar in an archive with compressed files:

$ afio -i -v -Z -y foobar archive

Unpack an archive with compressed files and protecting newer existing files:

$ afio -i -v -Z -n archive

list

Show list of table of contents of archive:

$ afio -t -Z archive

verify

Read archive and verify it against filesystem:

$ cd archived_directory
$ afio -r -Z archive


cpio

cpio copy files to and from archives.

backup

In copy-out mode, cpio copies files into an archive.

$ find . -print | cpio -o -v > archive

restore & list

In copy-in mode, cpio copies files out of an archive or lists the archive contents.

$ cpio -i -d -m -v < archive
$ cpio -i -t < archive # Print a table of contents.

cpio supports many archive formats. If you don't have any reason, use portable format as odc, newc and crc, because you may work on another machine as archive. To use archive format of GNU cpio is -H FORMAT or --format=FORMAT.


tar

tar is an archiving program designed to store and extract files from an archive file known as a tarfile.

backup

Create an archive of current directory:

$ tar -cvf archive.tar
$ tar -cvf /dev/tape_device . # to tape device

restore

Extract archive to current directory:

$ tar -xvf archive.tar
$ tar -xvf /dev/tape_device # from tape device
$ tar -xvzf archive.tar.gz # GNU tar
$ zcat archive.tar.gz | tar xvf - # non-GNU tar

list

Show list of table of contents of archive:

$ tar -tvf archive.tar
$ tar -tvf /dev/tape_device # from tape device
$ tar -tvzf archive.tar.gz # GNU tar
$ zcat archive.tar.gz | tar tvf - # non-GNU tar


Another tools

Following tools are useful too.

dd

dd convert and copies a file using specific input and output blocksizes.

dump & restore

dump examines files in a filesystem, determines which ones need to be backed up, and copies those files to a specified disk, tape or other storage medium. Subsequent incremental backups can then be layered on top of the full backup. restore command performs the inverse function of dump. dump's advantage are unmounted file systems dump, keeping the time of the access for each files and it works fast. This tool from BSD.

gzip

gzip compress the regular files, it reduces the size of the named files. Compressed files can be restored to their original form using gzip -d, gunzip or zcat.

bzip2

bzip2, same as gzip, compress the regular files, it reduces the size of the named files. Compressed files can be restored to their original form using bzip2 -d, bunzip2 or bzcat.
Compression is generally considerably better than achieved by gzip, but more slowly. Licensed under original License.


Reference

http://freshmeat.net/projects/afio/
Project detail for afio
http://www.gnu.org/software/cpio/
GNU cpio
http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/
GNU tar
http://www.gnu.org/software/fil eutils/
GNU fileutils
http://dump.sourceforge.net/
Linux ext2 dump/restore utilities
http://www.gzip.org/
The gzip home page
http://sources.redhat.com/bzip2/
The bzip2 and libbzip2 official home page

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