Greg A. Woods wrote:
> You have the amanda source.  It's not really that hard to adjust for
> other tar implementations, though ideally it would be adjusted once and
> for all to expect a portable tool like 'pax'.  :-)

Some software is designed such that no coding needs to be done as long
as interfaces are compatible - administrator friendliness.

> flame bait?  Obviously 'pax' is now the best 'tar' program available!  ;-)

Rather my opinion.

> Security?  It's certainly good enough if you trust the security of your
> local LAN.  Surely you are not trying to make your backup system cross
> an insecure network, are you?

That is if you trust everybody on your LAN. There have been holes in
AMANDA.

> > there's too much guessing done by the scheduler among other ad-hockery.

Not flame bait, read AMANDA's logs while it's doing its thing,
you'll understand. Also take a look at the source.

> > What I am looking for is a
> > simple yet flexible site-wide backup tools, and yet to find them. Has
> > anyone tried afbackup?
> 
> "simple yet flexible site-wide backup tools" is one of those sets of
> requirements that goes with the rule "Pick any two."

I disagree, I just think AMANDA and a few other related packages have
been "good enough" for most people, including myself; so is the lack of
simple and flexible tools.