Thanks for all the suggestions folks.. I quickly checked out all of them.. the problem I have is that the directory I want to backup is around 1.5GB or so and currently I use tar and then gzip to compress it into a single file which just manages to fit on a 700MB CD. rsync doesn't seem to be able to compress, flexbackup looks good but what is the output from flexbackup? It doesn't look like a single file but a tree structure (like rsync, dump etc.) with compressed files (which can be burnt onto a CD I guess..)..
I also came across this script called back2cd which says that it can backup a 1.5-2GB directory, with filewise compression, onto an iso image thus automating some of the tasks after the backup using any of the abovementioned tools... the links are: http://lists.leap-cf.org/pipermail/leaplist/2000-December/008604.html http://lists.leap-cf.org/pipermail/leaplist/2000-December/008611.html [ The first post is version 1.2 and the second is a diff (i.e. "difference file" to patch to 1.4 (instructions included). ] I think I'll try out some of these methods and see which one works best in my case.. will post an update.. Thanks, nirmal