This is a extract from the Redhat Web sit on Dump/Amanda
 
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-8.0-Manual/admin-primer/s1-disa
ster-backups.html
I am about to setup a new server with samaba and was going to use amanda
with dump but found this on redhat webs sit.
Has any body had this problem, and what would you suggest i use instead?
 Regards
 Mark 


dump/restore: Not Recommended!
The dump and restore programs are Linux equivalents to the UNIX programs of
the same name. As such, many system administrators with UNIX experience may
feel that dump and restore are viable candidates for a good backup program
under Red Hat Linux. Unfortunately, the design of the Linux kernel has moved
ahead of dump's design. Here is Linus Torvald's comment on the subject:

From:    Linus Torvalds
To:      Neil Conway
Subject: Re: [PATCH] SMP race in ext2 - metadata corruption.
Date:    Fri, 27 Apr 2001 09:59:46 -0700 (PDT)
Cc:      Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel At vger Dot kernel Dot org>

[ linux-kernel added back as a cc ]

On Fri, 27 Apr 2001, Neil Conway wrote:
> > I'm surprised that dump is deprecated (by you at least ;-)).  What to
> use instead for backups on machines that can't umount disks regularly? 


Note that dump simply won't work reliably at all even in 2.4.x: the buffer
cache and the page cache (where all the actual data is) are not
coherent. This is only going to get even worse in 2.5.x, when the
directories are moved into the page cache as well.

So anybody who depends on "dump" getting backups right is already playing
Russian roulette with their backups.  It's not at all guaranteed to get the
right results - you may end up having stale data in the buffer cache that
ends up being "backed up".

Dump was a stupid program in the first place. Leave it behind.

> I've always thought "tar" was a bit undesirable (updates atimes or
> ctimes for example).

Right now, the cpio/tar/xxx solutions are definitely the best ones, and
will work on multiple filesystems (another limitation of "dump"). Whatever
problems they have, they are still better than the _guaranteed_(*)  data
corruptions of "dump".

However, it may be that in the long run it would be advantageous to have a
"filesystem maintenance interface" for doing things like backups and
defragmentation..

                Linus

(*) Dump may work fine for you a thousand times. But it _will_ fail under
the right circumstances. And there is nothing you can do about it.
 

Given this problem, the use of dump/restore is strongly discouraged.