Features

KDar can encrypt your archives based on the strong "blowfish" algorithm. You can take advantage of the KWallet to store your archive password. (back to top)

KDar is able to backup everything from a single file to an entire filesystem. Additionally a mechanism of filters permits, based on the filename, to exclude or include some files while backing up or restoring a directory tree. Similarly, a secondary filter mechanism permits to exclude some branches of a directory tree, or to only include some branches. (back to top)

When making a backup with KDar, 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. (back to top)

KDar can split an archive over several removable media whatever their number is and whatever their size is. Thus KDar is able to save over old floppy disk, CD-R, DVD-R, CD-RW, DVD-RW, Zip, Jazz, etc... KDar 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. KDar can also backup data to 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, KDar will just pause and prompt the user asking a slice only if it is missing. (back to top)

KDar can use compression. Actually only the gzip and bzip2 algorithms are implemented, but some room has been made for any other compression algorithm. Note that, compression is made before slices are created, which means that using compression with slices will not make slices smaller, but will probably make less slices in the backup. (back to top)

KDar can 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 allows you to say that files under a given size (whatever their name is), will not be compressed. (back to top)

Even using compression KDar does not have to read the entire 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. KDar first reads the catalog (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 KDar will ask only for the slice(s) containing the file(s) to restore. (back to top)

Hard links are 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. (back to top)

Support for extended attributes have to be activated at libdar compilation time. KDar 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 KDar is configured to “ignore user Extended Attributes” and “ignore system Extended Attributes”. (back to top)

thanks to CRC (cyclic redundancy checks), KDar is able to detect data corruption in the archive. Only the file where data corruption occurred will not be possible to restore, but KDar will restore the others even when compression is used. (back to top)

The catalog (i.e.: the contents of an archive), can be extracted (this operation is called isolation) to a small file. This catalog can in turn be used as reference for making a differential archive. There is no more need to provide an archive to be able to create a differential backup over it. Just its catalog is necessary. (back to top)

KDar settings are automatically stored between sessions. (back to top)

You can restore any combination of individual files and directories. (back to top)

It is possible to restore any file without restoring the directories and subdirectories it was in at the time of the backup. If this option is enabled, all files will be restored in the root directory whatever their real position is. (back to top)

The Linux® ext2/3 filesystem provides for each inodes a set of flags, 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. KDar can take care not to save files that have this flag set. (back to top)

KDar can 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. Use this feature to automate the CD writing process between slices, for example. (back to top)

KDar can substitute convenient codes provided by the user for new archive names, as well as for the user commands. (back to top)

KDar can export the equivalent dar commands for its archiving operations. The commands are also written to a log file. (back to top)