[H-GEN] System Backup Methods

[Michael Anthon]

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Greetings,
I'm in a position where I need to be able to perform daily system
backups of a Linux server.  I've managed to kinda sneak our Oracle
development onto a Linux machine and absolutely must have a reliable
backup that I can get up and running quickly from.  I have not been able
to find anything that looked any good in my searching so far and was
hoping for some pointers from people that do this sort of thing already.

The system in question is Debain (Woody), running Oracle 8.1.6
Enterprise Edidtion and Oracle IAS.  It is acting (for the moment) as
our development repository and application server (running all sorts of
stuff and coping rather well).  

As an absolute minimum I would need to do nightly dumps of the databases
to tape (the server contains a DDS3 DAT drive) and a manual backup of
the OS whenever I make major changes.  

As a prefered option, I would like to perform a complete daily system
backup.  If possible I'd like to do a backup while the database is
live.  I've previously used ArcServe on NT/Novell systems and this was
able to do this type of backup, however I've been unable to find
anything similar for Linux.  If needs be I can shut down most of the
services and perform a full system backup some time during the night (it
is, afterall, a development system, not a production system 8^).

Anyway, any tips/pointers/caveats would be greatly appreciated

Cheers
Michael Anthon

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