

                        DAR's FEATURES


FILTERS:                      ref     : man dar / NOTES chapter XVI
                              keywords: -I -X -P [list of path]
dar is able to backup from total file system to a single file. Additionally a
mechanism of filters permits, based on the filename, to exclude or include
some files while backing up or restoring a directory tree. In the other
side, a secondary filter mechanism permits to exclude some branches of a
directory tree, or to only include some branches.


DIFFERENTIAL BACKUP:          ref     : man dar/TUTORIAL
                              keywords: -A
When making a backup with dar, you have the possibility to make a full backup
or a differential backup. A full backup, as expected makes backup of all
files as specified on the command line (with or without filters). Instead, a
differential backup, (over filter mechanism), saves only files that have
changed since a given reference backup. Additionally, files that existed in
the reference backup and which do no more exist at the time of the
differential backup are recorded in the backup. At recovery time, (unless you
deactivate it), restoring a differential backup will update changed files
and new files, but also remove files that have been recorded as deleted.
Note that the reference backup can be a full backup or another differential
backup. This way you can make a first full backup, then many differential
backup, each taking as reference the last backup made.


SLICES:                       ref     : man dar/TUTORIAL/NOTES chapter III
                              keywords: -s -S -p
Dar stands for Disk ARchive. From the beginning it was designed to be able
to split an archive over several removable media whatever their number is
and whatever their size is. Thus dar is able to save over old floppy disk,
CD-R, DVD-R, CD-RW, DVD-RW, Zip, Jazz, etc... Dar is not concerned by
un/mounting a removable medium, instead it is independent of hardware.
Given the size, it will split the archive in several files (called SLICES),
eventually pausing before creating the next one, allowing this way, the user
to un/mount a medium, burn the file on CD-R, send it by email (if your mail
system does not allow huge file in emails, dar can help you here also).
By default, (no size specified), dar will make one slice whatever its size is.
Additionally, the size of the first slice can be specified separately, if for
example you want first to fulfill a partially filled disk before starting
using empty ones. Last, at restoration time, dar will just pause and prompt
the user asking a slice only if it is missing.


COMPRESSION:                  ref     : man page
                              keywords: -z -y
last, dar can use compression. By default no compression is used. Actually
only gzip and bzip2 algorithm are implemented, but some room has been made
any other compression algorithm. Note that, compression is made before slices,
which means that using compression with slices, will not make slices smaller,
but will probably make less slices in the backup.


DIRECT ACCESS:
even using compression dar has not to read the whole backup to extract one
file. This way if you just want to restore one file from a huge backup, the
process will be much faster than using tar. Dar first reads the catalogue
(i.e. the contents of the backup), then it goes directly to the location of
the saved file(s) you want to restore and proceed to restoration. In
particular using slices dar will ask only for the slice(s) containing the
file(s) to restore.


HARD LINK CONSIDERATION:
hard links are now properly saved. They are properly restored if possible. If
for example restoring across a mounted file system, hard linking will fail, but
dar will then duplicate the inode and file content, issuing a warning.


EXTENDED ATTRIBUTES:           ref     : man dar/NOTES chapter I, V
                               keywords: -u -U
support for extended attributes have to be activated at compilation time
(see INSTALL). Dar is able to save and restore EA, all or just those of a
given namespace (system or user). If no EA have been saved and restoration
occurs over a file that has EA, they will be preserved. But if they have
been saved empty for a given file, any existing EA for that file will be
removed at restoration time, unless -u and/or -U is given on command-line.


ARCHIVE TESTING               ref     : man dar/TUTORIAL/GOOD_BACKUP_PRACTICE
                              keywords: -t
thanks to CRC (cyclic redundancy checks), dar is able to detect data corruption
in the archive. Only the file where data corruption occurred will not be
possible to restore, but dar will restore the other even when compression is
used.


USING PIPES / REMOTE OPERATIONS
                    ref     : NOTES chapter II, XII/man dar dar_slave dar_xform
                    keywords: -i -o -
 
dar is now able to produce an archive to its standard output or named pipe. it
is also able to read an archive through a pair of pipes, to take a remote
archive as reference, or even to restore data from an archive on a remote host.
This way it is now possible to store an archive remotely and in total security
(if using encrypted means, like ssh sessions. You will also find the netcat
program very helpful)


ISOLATION                           ref     : man dar
                                    keywords: -C
the catalogue (i.e.: the contents of an archive), can be extracted (this
operation is called isolation) to a small file, that can in turn be used
as reference for differential archive. There is no more need to provide an
archive to be able to create a differential backup over it, just its
catalogue is necessary.


RE-SHAPE SLICES OF AN EXISTING ARCHIVE        ref     : man dar_xform
                                              keywords:

the external program named "dar_xform" is able to change the size of slices
of a given archive. The resulting archive is totally identical to archives
directly created by dar. Source archive can be taken from a set of slice,
from standard input or even a named pipe.

USER COMMAND BETWEEN SLICES
               ref     : man dar dar_slave dar_xform/NOTES chapters VII, XI, XV
               keywords: -E -F

several hooks are provided for dar to call a given command once a slice has
been written or before reading a slice. Several macros allow the user command
or script to know the slice number, path and archive basename.

SCRAMBLING                       ref     : man dar/NOTES chapter IX
                                 keywords: -K -J
the archive can be "scrambled" given a pass phrase. The same
pass phrase must be given to retrieve or extract the archive contents. Of
course this is not a very strong encryption, and its use is against simple
user that do not have much mean to crack this scheme.

CONFIGURATION FILE               ref     : man dar
                                 keywords: -B
dar can now read parameter from file. This is a way to extends the
command-line length limited length input. A configuration file can ask dar to
read (to include) other configuration files. A simple but efficient mechanism
forbids a file to include itself directly or not, and there is no limitation
in the degree of recursion for the inclusion of configuration files.

Two special configuration files $HOME/.darrc and /etc/darrc are read if they
exist. The share the same syntax as any configuration file which is the syntax
used on the command-line, completed by newlines and comments.

Any configuration file can also receive conditional statements, which describe
which options are to be used in different conditions. Conditions are:
restoration, listing, testing, difference, saving, isolation, any operation,
none yet defined (which may be useful in case or recursive inclusion of files)

SELECTIVE COMPRESSION           ref     : man dar/samples
                                keywords: -Y -Z
dar can now be given a special filter that determines which files will be
compressed or not. This way you can speed up the backup operation by not
trying to compress *.mp3, *.mpg, *.zip, *.gz and other already compressed
files. Moreover another mechanism allow you to say that file under a given
size (whatever their name is), will not be compressed.

DAR MANAGER                     ref     : man dar_manager/NOTES chapter X
                                keywords:
The advantage of differential backup is that it takes much less space to store
and time to complete than always making full backup. But, in the other hand,
you can have a lot of them. If you want to restore a particular file, you can
thus spend time to find in which backup is located the most recent version.
This is solved using dar_manager. This little command-line program, will
gather contents information of all your backups. At restoration time, it will
call dar for you to restore the asked file(s) from the proper backup.
dar_manager is actually stable but is in its first release. I thus, expect a
lot of comments about its (slow) speed, which I will try to improve in future.
But anyway, the more you will have file in a backup (whatever the amount of
data is), the more it will take time to execute. Still remains the advantage
of the automatic processing of the restoration that allows you to do
something else during that time.

FLAT RESTORATION                      ref     : man dar
                                      keywords: -f
It is now possible to restore any file without restoring the directories and
subdirectories it was in at the time of the backup. If this option is
activated, all files will be restored in the (-R) root directory whatever
their real position is.

NODUMP FLAG                           ref     : man dar
                                      keywords: --nodump
Linux ext2/3 filesystem, provides for each inodes a set of flag, among which
is the "nodump" flag, which in substance says "don't save this file". This
is used by the so-called dump backup program. Dar can now take care to not save
those files that have this flag set.

DATA PROTECTION                       ref     : man dar/NOTES chapter XIV, XV
                                      keywords:
dar relies on the Parchive tool for data protection against media errors.
http://parchive.sourceforge.net/
