Backup Software for Linux?

[BlahBlah_X]

What is a good backup software for linux that will backup the entire system to a .iso file?

[likwid]

The best backup software is amanda, however I use it for tape backups. I do not think it is possible to do it to iso's. I would just create a script that uses dump and mkisofs.

[BlahBlah_X]

Um... I guess I forgot to mention that I am a linux newbie.

[likwid]

Alright, what distribution of linux are you running? This website has a simplified tool for backing up linux to dvd's and cd's, if you have a cdrecord compatible burner. If none of this makes any sense to you, look for some general linux tutorials at www.tldp.org or google.

[Marsolin]

KDar is worth taking a look at for this.

[KenJackson]

I used to occasionally tar up a big part of my system in CD-sized chunks and burn them to CDs. What a hassle!

Then I bought a USB external hard drive. Now I have a not-too-complicated cron script that I wrote that tars up various parts of my system at various times and copies them to the USB drive.

The theory is that either my main hard drive or the USB drive can fail at any time, but it is very unlikely that they will both fail within a few days of each other.

The meat of the script is something like this:

tar czpfC ken.tar.gz / $EXCLUDE home/ken > logfile.txt

The $EXCLUDE variable contains directories I don't want to backup, like browser cache directories, etc. You can read about the tar switches with the man tar command.