Given a set of `volume definitions', it creates arj, tar or afio based backups, and stores them either to a device in /dev, or a file in the filesystem, to be burned to optical media later, moved off to other machines, etc. Through a straightforward configuration file, you can instruct tob to mount and unmount devices before beginning backups.

tob supports full backups, differential backups (of the files which were changed since the last full backup), and incremental backups (of files changed since any previous backups). It lets you determine the size of the backup before actually making it, maintain listings of made backups, make remote backups and possibly more.

Join the announcement mailing list to be notified of new releases. Send mail here with any subject and any body. You'll get one mail per release, and that's about it.

Bug reports should be mailed here, and should include your tob.rc and a copy of the output that you're getting.

• The tob manual page.
• Some notes on using arj as the archiver.
• Tob adheres to the philosophy of making the simple things simple, and the complicated things possible. See how in the Getting started with tob document.

tob 0.26 - tob-0.26.tgz

Bugfix and documentation release. Tape backups no longer drop deletions files in /. tempfile and mktemp finding are much smarter. Documented how to deal with directories that have spaces in their name.

tob 0.25 - tob-0.25.tgz

• tob will now correctly deal with files on fat/vfat volumes, instead of backing them up all the time, it will only archive them when they change. Thanks to Ed Ferguson for that one.
• accepted idea and example tob.rc from Tim Janik to support arj as an archive driver.
• There's a new config option, EXT, that lets you tell tob which file extensions to use when storing backups to the filesystem.
• New .spec file for Red Hat.
• Patch from Marc Tanguy to avoid errors when dealing with patterns that begin with -

tob 0.24 - tob-0.24.tgz

Fixed problem with restoring files using a pattern that starts with a dash.

Fatal error messages are no longer suppressed with VERBOSE=NO.

tob 0.23 - tob-0.23.tgz

Added MAXBACKUPAGE to control how old filesystem-based backups have to be before they're automatically cleaned out for you.

Deprecated BACKUPDIR. In fact, tob will throw an error if you have BACKUPDIR set. The old BACKUPDEV/BACKUPDIR split was confusing people, and I've undone it. Now, if BACKUPDEV is a genuine directory, tob's filesystem-based backup logic will work.

Thanks to Dan Christensen for reporting Debian bugs that led to these improvements.

tob 0.22 - tob-0.22.tgz

The "-d is a nail in search of a hammer" release. All sloppy uses of directory existence-checking have been corrected, along with a very serious syntax error.

tob 0.21 - not available for download (totally broken)

The "whoops" release. If you were doing backups to tape, check your / partition. You might see some new files there. Sorry about that.

This release also silences some error messages when tob chose to "rm" various files in its administrative area.

tob 0.20 - tob-0.20.tgz

The "adoptee" release. tob had been unmaintained ever since Karel moved on to other things ago. While Dirk Eddelbuettel continued to look after the Debian package, made small fixes and integrated a few patches, tob has essentially been without a proper home. I've taken it in and given it a CVS repository and everything.

This release adds much improved support for backups to filesystems. Full backups will delete all old backups. Incremental backups will delete older incremental and differential backups.