scdbackup 0.8.6 review

scdbackup is a simplified CD/DVD backup program for Linux

License: BSD License File size: 876K Developer: Thomas Schmitt

0

scdbackup is a simplified CD/DVD backup program for Linux. It can back up large amounts of data on one or more media, with no special tools needed for reading the backup. scdbackup supports ISO9660 filesystems and afio archives.

Its special features are automatic division of data into multiple volumes, verification of write success, and incremental backups. An information script on each volume tells where a certain file may be found. CDs get written via cdrecord. DVDs get written via growisofs.

Purpose:

backup large amounts of data on one or more CDs or DVDs,
simple (therefore no excuse not to do the backup),
no special tool needed for reading the backup

Formats:

ISO9660 file systems (readable after : mount )
afio archives (readable by : afio ... /dev/cdrom)

Special features:

Breaks the 650 MB / 4.7 GB limits (more than one CD / DVD )
Information script on each CD tells where a certain file may be found
Collision test with renaming avoids aborting of mkisofs
Interrupted backups can be resumed at the start of the failed piece
Verification of resulting CDs possible by recorded checksums
Incremental backups with an arbitrary number of levels
Multi user safe by use of a locking protocol

Hardware requirements:

A CD recorder suitable for cdrecord (most SCSI or ATAPI writers, see also list of drives ) It has to be reachable via a SCSI address. On modern Linux systems, other connection types can be used via an emulated SCSI bus. Recent versions of cdrecord got direct support for IDE burners via address prefixes ATAPI: and ATA: .

As an alternative, it is possible to use cdrskin, based on libburn.

and/or

A DVD writer suitable for growisofs. It has to be reachable via a SCSI device file. On modern Linux systems, other connection types can be used via an emulated SCSI bus. On even more modern Linux (>= 2.5), growisofs can use IDE device files directly.

As an alternative, it is possible to use cdrecord-ProDVD.

If you got any other high capacity backup devices which you want to use rather than a CD recorder then please contact me. I am interested in learning how to use them for writing of backup data.

Software requirements :

/bin/sh
compatible to GNU Bourne-Again SHell (bash).
including usual programs like: cat, date, du, echo, ls, ...
see hints for working around shell compatibility problems

afio
archiver program (for system backups)

gzip
data compression program (for compressed afio and incremental backups)

bc
calculator language (only if you employ the locking protocol)

Required for writing DVD :

growisofs
from package "dvd+rw-tools"

or cdrecord-ProDVD (see README, Appendix DVD)
a binary with time limited license

What's New in This Release:
Backup volumes are now composed alphabetically by default.
Incremental backup preparation has become much faster.
An appendix about preparations for disaster recovery has been added to the README file.