Dump examines files in a file system, 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. The restore command performs the inverse function of dump; it can restore a full backup of a file system. Single files and directory subtrees may also be restored from full or partial backups in interactive mode.

Rdup is a utility inspired by rsync and the plan9 way of doing backups. Rdup itself does not backup anything, it only print a list of absolute file names to standard output. Auxiliary scripts are needed that act on this list and implement the backup strategy.

SnapRAID backs up files stored across multiple storage devices, such as disk arrays, in an efficient way reminiscent of its namesake RAID level 4.

Instead of creating a complete copy of the data like classic backups do, it saves space by calculating one or more sets of parity information that's a fraction of the size. Each parity set is stored on an additional device the size of the largest single storage volume, and protects against the loss of any one device, up to a total of six. If more devices fail than there are parity sets, (only) the files they contained are lost, not the entire array. Data corruption by unreliable devices can also be detected and repaired.

SnapRAID is distinct from actual RAID in that it operates on files and creates distinct snapshots only when run. It mainly targets large collections of big files that rarely change, like home media centers. One disadvantage is that all data not in the latest snapshot may be lost if one device fails. An advantage is that accidentally deleted files can be recovered, which is not the case with RAID.

It's also more flexible than true RAID: devices can have different sizes and more can be added without disturbing others. Devices that are not in use can remain fully idle, saving power and producing less noise.

With dirvish you can maintain a set of complete images of your file systems with unattended creation and expiration. A dirvish backup vault is like a time machine for your data.

Restic is a program that does backups right and was designed with the following principles in mind:

• Easy: Doing backups should be a frictionless process, otherwise you might be tempted to skip it. Restic should be easy to configure and use, so that, in the event of a data loss, you can just restore it. Likewise, restoring data should not be complicated.

• Fast: Backing up your data with restic should only be limited by your network or hard disk bandwidth so that you can backup your files every day. Nobody does backups if it takes too much time. Restoring backups should only transfer data that is needed for the files that are to be restored, so that this process is also fast.

• Verifiable: Much more important than backup is restore, so restic enables you to easily verify that all data can be restored.

• Secure: Restic uses cryptography to guarantee confidentiality and integrity of your data. The location the backup data is stored is assumed not to be a trusted environment (e.g. a shared space where others like system administrators are able to access your backups). Restic is built to secure your data against such attackers.

• Efficient: With the growth of data, additional snapshots should only take the storage of the actual increment. Even more, duplicate data should be de-duplicated before it is actually written to the storage back end to save precious backup space.

Burp is a network backup and restore program. It attempts to reduce network traffic and the amount of space that is used by each backup.

wimlib is a C library and set of command-line utilities for creating, modifying, extracting, and mounting archives in the Windows Imaging Format (WIM files). It can capture and apply WIMs directly from and to NTFS volumes using ntfs-3g, preserving NTFS-specific attributes.

GNU Coreutils package includes all of the basic command-line tools that are expected in a POSIX system, excluding shell. This package is the union of the GNU fileutils, sh-utils, and textutils packages. Most of these tools offer extended functionality beyond that which is outlined in the POSIX standard.

Patch is a program that applies changes to files based on differences laid out as by the program "diff". The changes may be applied to one or more files depending on the contents of the diff file. It accepts several different diff formats. It may also be used to revert previously applied differences.

This package provides all the locales supported by the GNU C Library, more than 400 in total. To use them set the LOCPATH environment variable to the share/locale sub-directory of this package.

GNU Diffutils is a package containing tools for finding the differences between files. The "diff" command is used to show how two files differ, while "cmp" shows the offsets and line numbers where they differ. "diff3" allows you to compare three files. Finally, "sdiff" offers an interactive means to merge two files.

The Time Zone Database (often called tz or zoneinfo) contains code and data that represent the history of local time for many representative locations around the globe. It is updated periodically to reflect changes made by political bodies to time zone boundaries, UTC offsets, and daylight-saving rules.

Tar provides the ability to create tar archives, as well as the ability to extract, update or list files in an existing archive. It is useful for combining many files into one larger file, while maintaining directory structure and file information such as permissions and creation/modification dates. GNU tar offers many extensions over the standard utility.

libiconv provides an implementation of the iconv function for systems that lack it. iconv is used to convert between character encodings in a program. It supports a wide variety of different encodings.

Any Unix-like operating system needs a C library: the library which defines the "system calls" and other basic facilities such as open, malloc, printf, exit...

The GNU C library is used as the C library in the GNU system and most systems with the Linux kernel.

This package provides a standalone shared library version of BFD, which is otherwise distributed and installed as part of the Binutils package release.

GNU Hello prints the message "Hello, world!" and then exits. It serves as an example of standard GNU coding practices. As such, it supports command-line arguments, multiple languages, and so on.

Make is a program that is used to control the production of executables or other files from their source files. The process is controlled from a Makefile, in which the developer specifies how each file is generated from its source. It has powerful dependency resolution and the ability to determine when files have to be regenerated after their sources change. GNU make offers many powerful extensions over the standard utility.

Any Unix-like operating system needs a C library: the library which defines the "system calls" and other basic facilities such as open, malloc, printf, exit...

The GNU C library is used as the C library in the GNU system and most systems with the Linux kernel.

Any Unix-like operating system needs a C library: the library which defines the "system calls" and other basic facilities such as open, malloc, printf, exit...

The GNU C library is used as the C library in the GNU system and most systems with the Linux kernel.

GNU Coreutils package includes all of the basic command-line tools that are expected in a POSIX system, excluding shell. This package is the union of the GNU fileutils, sh-utils, and textutils packages. Most of these tools offer extended functionality beyond that which is outlined in the POSIX standard.

Findutils supplies the basic file directory searching utilities of the GNU system. It consists of two primary searching utilities: "find" recursively searches for files in a directory according to given criteria and "locate" lists files in a database that match a query. Two auxiliary tools are included: "updatedb" updates the file name database and "xargs" may be used to apply commands with arbitrarily long arguments.

The Time Zone Database (often called tz or zoneinfo) contains code and data that represent the history of local time for many representative locations around the globe. It is updated periodically to reflect changes made by political bodies to time zone boundaries, UTC offsets, and daylight-saving rules.

This package provides all the locales supported by the GNU C Library, more than 400 in total. To use them set the LOCPATH environment variable to the share/locale sub-directory of this package.