Disk ARchive
Dar is a shell command that makes backup of a directory tree and files. Its features include splitting archives over several files, DVD, CD, ZIP, or floppies, compression, full or differential backups, strong encryption, proper saving and restoration of hard links, extended attributes, file forks, Door inodes, and sparse files, remote backup using pipes and external commands (such as ssh), and rearrangement of the "slices" of an existing archive. It can run commands between slices, before and after saving some defined files or directories (for a proper database backup, for example), and quickly retrieve individual files from differential and full backups. Several external GUIs exist as alternatives to its CLI interface, like kdar, DarGUI, SaraB, etc.
| Tags | Archiving Compression Packaging Utilities Security Cryptography backup DVD Disks Systems Administration |
|---|---|
| Licenses | GPLv2 |
| Operating Systems | POSIX Linux Windows Solaris BSD NetBSD FreeBSD Mac OS X |
| Implementation | C++ |
Recent releases
- 15 Jun 2014 19:06
Release Notes: This release fixes a bug in the cache layer, used to reduce context switches when using Dar over SSH. This cache layer could grow continuously, leading dar/libdar using up half of the RAM depending on the operating system. Some minor typos and display bugs have also been fixed, and the configure script was adapted to better integrate with FreeBSD systems.
- 21 Apr 2014 12:22
Release Notes: This release fixes compilation issues under Mac OS X and other FreeBSD systems using clang as a C++ compiler, brings some new libdar API calls, adds support for backslashes in DCF files, and fixes several minor bugs in the code and documentation.
- 18 Jan 2014 19:28
Release Notes: This release adds several minor bugfixes, including one for a bug met under a very rare condition leading dar to wrongly report a file as corrupted at reading time, another for a bug in the sparse file detection mechanism which could lead dar to miss detecting small holes in files, several code updates to support compilation in g++11 mode, and other fixes relative to dar compilation within a BSD system like Mac OS X.
- 26 Aug 2013 18:57
Release Notes: dar now takes care of umask when creating a slice when dar is used with the --hash option. This release also improves performance when used over ssh using dar_slave and provides fixes for several minor bugs and corrects spelling in documentation.
- 09 Mar 2013 15:14
Release Notes: This release mainly contains two fixes. The first bug was located in the sparse file detection mechanism, leading a file containing a very specific string just before a hole to fail being backed up, with dar reporting "CRC error" at testing time. This same bug also caused "CRC error" to be reported at archive merging time. The second was located in the dar_manager database code, which led to database corruption. The fix avoids further corruption and also cleans up existing databases which have been corrupted by that bug.
Recent comments
Re: memory hungry
> if you have thousands files and a lot
> GB's, read first
> about memory usage.
The memory requirement is proportional to the
number of files not to the amount of data to be saved.
For more detailed info see
http://dar.linux.free.fr/doc/Limitations.html
memory hungry
if you have thousands files and a lot GB's, read first
about memory usage.
scripts
I can recommend DAR. I have some helper scripts for it at http://www.sliqware.ndo.co.uk/
Works well with SSH and Cygwin
I use dar to perform remote network backups of a hosted linux server to a local Windows machine using the windows build of dar under cygwin. It works great. Wonderfull application.
Nice job on version2
Hi, I must compliment you on version 2 of dar. The documentation is much better organized and easier to
understand.
edrusb
02 Apr 2002 14:19
