[BBLISA] Tape backup program for Debian?

[richb at pioneer.ci.net (Rich Braun)]

> From: Scott Ehrlich <srehrlich at gmail.com>
> It has been very educational and interesting to read about the various
> backup methods.   It also was revealed to me, from the responses, that
> my question left out the fact that the backup method is to save data
> on the local hard drive of the machine to the locally installed tape
> drive...

Gordon Marx pointed out:
> Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but why not just use a network
> utitlity and tell it to back up localhost?

OK I'll jump in with a probably-controversial assertion:  there just isn't a
whole heck of a lot of choice out there.  You have Amanda and you have one or
two other less-desirable freeware alternatives for automating the backup
process.  You can roll your own scripts using cpio/tar/rsync, or you can buy
something expensive like BRU or Legato.  Probably most people just throw in
the towel and buy one of those backup-appliance gizmos that consists of a
dedicated PC with some dedicated software that does a glorified rsync.

There is essentially no ongoing software development in backup technology for
Unix/Linux.  I can't fathom why--maybe it's the Microsoft factor, where any
hint of profits to be made in a niche results in a business-killing response
from Redmond--but lots of people have searched high and low for anything
user-friendly to back up all those hundreds of gigs of data that so many of us
are piling up at home and at work.  It's a pretty fruitless search, and
although I've been a fan of Amanda for a long time, it's definitely showing
its age during an era when desktop software has become more user-friendly.

The state of the art in backup technology is abysmal and hasn't improved much
since I first researched it in 1991.

There are some useful threads in the BLU archive about Amanda--go to
http://www.blu.org/pipermail/ and type your desired words in the search box.

-rich