FSArchiver

FSArchiver is an open source and free system utility for creating backup archives. It is written in the C programming language and designed from the ground up to be very fast and extremely easy to use.

Anyone can use FSArchiver to create compressed archives of the contents of their filesystems without too much hassle. You can save entire filesystems to an archive file, as well as to restore them from a backup archive, overwriting existing content.

Unique command-line output with numerous usage examples

Despite the fact that it’s a command-line tool, FSArchiver is very easy to use as users are presented with a unique command-line output that shows numerous usage examples instead of just displaying available command-line options.

You will be able to backup only one filesystem or up to two filesytems to a single archive, to restore only the first, only the second or both filesystems from the backup archive, to restore a filesystem and convert it to ReiserFS, as well as to backup a filesystem to a split archive.

Getting started with FSArchiver

Installing the FSArchiver tool on a GNU/Linux distribution is easier than you might think, because the project is available in the main software repositories of major operating systems and be installed using the integrated package manager (e.g. pacman, Ubuntu Software Center, Synaptic Package Manager, YaST, Yum Extender, etc.).

on Softoware you can always download the latest version of FSArchiver, which is distributed only as a source package. Installing it is also easy, just save it on your Home directory, unpack it, open the Terminal app and run something like “cd /home/softoware/fsarchiver-0.6.19” (replace softoware with your username), execute the ‘./configure && make’ command to configure and compile the program, and then the ‘sudo make install’ command to install it system wide.

After installation, use FSArchiver from the command-line interface to create backup archives. We recommend that you first run the ‘fsarchiver --help’ command to view the program’s command-line options and usage examples. You can also run the ‘man fsarchiver’ command for more details on how to use FSArchiver.

What is new in this release:

• Implemented support for zstd compression.

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.6.19:

• Reverted "number of inode blocks per group" patch which caused a regression in release 0.6.18

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.6.11:

• Updated supported btrfs compat flags to make it work with btrfs-2.6.35
• The -c/--cryptpass option now supports interactive passwords: use "-c -"

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.6.10:

• Fixed support of symbolic links on ntfs filesystems with ntfs3g >= 2010.3.6

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.6.8:

• Fixed compilation error on systems with recent kernel headers by including < sys/stat.h >
• Fixed critical bug: there was a risk of corruption when the archive was written on a smbfs/cifs filesystem

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.6.7:

• Added support for sparse files (sparse file on the original disk will be recreated as sparse file)
• Added per-archive minimum fsarchiver version requirement (MAINHEADKEY_MINFSAVERSION)
• Added dirsinfo in archives with simple files and directories to store stats required for progression
• The logfile created when option -d is used now has a specific name so that it's not overwritten
• The md5 checksums are now calculated using the implementation from libgcrypt instead of the internal one
• The libgcrypt library is now a mandatory dependency and crypto cannot be disabled any more
• Allow non root users to use "fsarchiver archinfo" as long as they have read permissions on the archive

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.6.6:

• Fix: don't remove the archive file when savefs/savedir fails because the archive already exists
• Partitions already mounted are remounted with MS_BIND to have access to files hidden by mounted filesystems
• Analyse filesystems only when they are all accessible to prevent having to wait and then get an error
• Moved management of data files (open/write/md5sum) from extract.c to a separate object (datafile.c)
• Important internal changes, renaming of functions/files, and simplifications for better consistency
• Rephrased and simplified messages and other improvements in fsarchiver.c (contribution from dgerman)
• Fixed potential memory error in savefs/savedir with extended attributes (bug reported by mbiebl)

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.6.5:

• Fixed compilation issues (pkg-config problems especially on systems with e2fsprogs < 1.41.2)
• Retry with the default level (gzip -6) when compression of a data block lacks memory with bzip2/lzma

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.6.2:

• Dynamic memory allocation for ntfs specific extended-attributes in create.c
• Fix related the the ntfs attributes when lgetxattr returns a negative size
• Saves the name of the original device where the filesystem is stored (FSYSHEADKEY_ORIGDEV)
• Fixed enable options in configure: "--enable-xxx" had the opposite effect (Thanks to horhe)
• Exit with an error if the user wants to use a compression level which is not supported (Thanks to mbiebl)
• Fixed crash when mount fails (mntbyfsa was set to true and not clear if mount fails)
• Fixed code for ntfs symlinks (they have to be recreated as normal files and dirs + special attributes)
• Changed the requirement from ntfs3g-AR (advanced release) to ntfs3g >= 20091114 (standard release) for ntfs
• Improvements and fixes in the autotools build chain files (contribution from Michael Biebl)
• Added option "-L" to specify the label of the archive: it's just a comment about the contents
• Detabified the sources: find . -iname "*.[ch]" -exec sed -i -e "s/[ ]/ /g" -e 's!{ !{ !g' {} ;

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.6.1:

• The OpenSSL implementation of the encryption has been replaced with a libgcrypt implementation to fix licensing issues with the GPL.
• This version is part of SystemRescueCd 1.3.1 (a live CD with system and disk tools).

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.5.9:

• Fixed 'fsarchiver probe' which ignored /dev/dm-0 (first device mapper disk)
• It now displays NTFS uuids in the archive information ("fsarchive archinfo archive.fsa")
• Support for "system.ntfs_times" attribute supported by ntfs-3g >= 2009.4.4AR.17
• Support for "system.ntfs_dos_name" attribute supported by ntfs-3g >= 2009.4.4AR.17
• Support for "user.ntfs.efsinfo" attribute which allows to copy and restore encrypted files
• Improved detection for ntfs-3g-AR and print a more explicit message if inappropriate version found
• Added info about the minimum fsarchiver version required in the archive to allow doing checks at restfs
• Added FSYSHEADKEY_MOUNTINFO in the fsheader to allow modifications in the ntfs-3g streams_interface in the future

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.5.8:

• Preserve UUID with ntfs filesystems (64bit number written in boot sector at offset 0x48)
• Fixed "fsarchiver probe": partitions having a 0 at the end of their number were ignored
• Added distributions support files in the sources (ebuild script for gentoo, spec for rpm)
• Using md5.c from coreutils-6.9 to avoid a licensing issue (this one is under GPL-v2)

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.5.7:

• Added detection of partitions with no known filesystem in "fsarchive probe"

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.5.4:

• Fix problems in the management of SIGINT when the Ctrl+C is pressed to abort
• Fixed warning about xattr attributes being too large when the size returned is -1
• Bug fix: fuse filesystem were not unmounted correctly after a fatal error

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.5.3:

• Support for extended attributes up to 64k (the size was limited to 1024 bytes)
• The file header is only copied if open64() is successful (prevents header with no data)
• Management of files which are truncated during a live-backup (padding with zeros)
• Test to make sure it cannot archive the archive itself during a live-backup
• Improved error management when there are problems on files or attributes in create.c

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.5.2:

• Copy the contents of /dev/ during a live-backup (option -A used) else /dev/console missing at reboot
• Bug fix: archive corruption when a file attribute was empty (eg: "user.encryptable" on ntfs may be empty)

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.5.1:

• Option -o (overwrite) was broken when the archive already exists (introduced in 0.5.0)
• Better management of errors (no space left on device) when an archive is extracted
• Fixed errors in fsaprintf arguments thanks to __attribute__ ((format (printf, x, y)));
• Print statistics about success and errors at the end of an operation

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.4.8:

• Fixed compilation errors when fsarchiver is configured with --disable-crypto
• Fixed problems when attributes stored in dico are empty

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.4.7:

• The mount-points directories are now archived during a live-backup (important for /dev, /proc, /sys)
• Better management of corrupt archive files: allow to continue the restoration on the next valid file found
• Bug fix: Ignore devices that are cached by blkid in "fsarchive probe" (cdrom devices that do not exist were shown)
• Bug fix: "fsarchiver probe" detected ext4 filesystem as ext3 when libblkid < 1.41 (it's part of e2fsprogs)
• Bug fix: Fixed minor memory leak in "fsarchiver probe" by calling blkid_put_cache() to free the dynamic memory
• Bug fix: Fixed memory error (invalid free) when a corrupt data block is found in the archive (bad checksum)
• Bug fix: Show and error message and exit instead of waiting when the required fstools are not installed
• Bug fix: fixed potential crash in thread_comp when aborting a restoration process because of an error

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.4.6:

• Bug fix: fixed various memory leaks reported by valgrind (dictionaries structures were sometimes not freed)
• Internal changes: replaced most "struct" with "typedef struct", refactoring code in create.c

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.4.5:

• Bug fix: empty files must not be copied with small files, and there is no need to write the checksum
• Bug fix: commands with big output were blocking until the pipe was read which was never done (thanks to Setsuna)
• Bug fix: show all the restored files at restfs including the small files which are compressed in a single block

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.4.4:

• The compression ratio has been optimized for filesystems with many small files. Instead of compressing the data of each file in a separate block, multiple small files now share the same data block, which provides a better compression ratio.
• A bug regarding the unmount which is done at the end of the operation was fixed.
• The "-a" option was added, which allows you to ignore the check for the acl and user_xattr mount options when the user is doing a backup of a filesystem which is already mounted.

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.4.2:

• The management of filesystem features for ext2/ext3/ext4 has been rewritten so that it works in all cases (such as with old e2fsprogs versions or when doing a filesystem conversion).
• Also, compilation errors were fixed on rhel-5.x and fedora-11-alpha. Filesystem detection was improved.

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.4.1:

• This version is able to archive and extract NTFS filesystems. It can be used to flexibly clone NTFS partitions. This means you can restore the backup of an NTFS filesystem to a partition which is smaller than the original or somewhere else on the disk. It has been tested on the XP version of Windows only. This requires the advanced release of ntfs-3g (systemrescuecd-1.1.5-beta15 is a live CD that comes with fsarchiver-0.4.1 and all its requirements).
• This version also adds a command that shows all the filesystems of the computer: "fsarchiver probe simple".

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.3.7:

• More flexibility was introduced in the compression levels to allow more choices: there are now 9 compression levels.
• Support was added for encryption using openssl and blowfish to encrypt the archive with a password.
• The way an archive is read when we don't want to restore all of its file systems was optimized.
• The help screen now shows which optional features have been enabled at compilation time.
• Other internal changes were made, which are not visible to users.

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.3.6:

• Fixed broken "restdir" (bug introduced in fsarchiver-0.3.6)
• Changed types of the integers used in the archive to optimize the space used by headers

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.3.5:

• A buffer overflow that caused a crash was fixed.
• A problem that truncated the external commands executed was fixed.
• Checks were added for header files in ./configure to make sure the program won't fail to compile when xattr.h is not installed.
• A workaround was added for a bug in tune2fs on ext4, which is used by fsarchiver.
• Support was added for lzo compression (a very fast algorithm).

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.3.3:

• Major bugs were fixed, such as deadlocks in the queue and corruption of a checksum during savefs, which makes the restoration of the archive impossible.
• Management of the error and normal messages was improved.
• Support was added for the btrfs filesystem attributes, since its format should not change in the future.

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.2.10:

• Removed several memory leaks in the queue management and in the dico management
• Fixed possible crash at the end of "savedir"

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.2.8:

• Ability to disable support for LZMA compression in ./configure (useful if you don't have liblzma)
• Simplified the code related to the management of the queue, and big code cleanup
• Optimized the memory management to require less memory

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.2.7:

• This new version supports multiple filesystems per archive.
• The syntax of "restfs" has been changed to allow extracting archives with several filesystems.
• It also adds a new command "archinfo" to display information about an existing image. The threads management has been optimized.
• It's now possible to compress using lzma, as well as gzip and bzip2.

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.2.6:

• Optimized multi-threading using pthread_cond_timedwait() instead of usleep()

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.2.4:

• Ported the sources to autoconf/automake
• Internal: replaced OBJTYPE_END with a specific end of filesystem header

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.2.2:

• Support for large files (files bigger than 2GB). Thanks to Setsuna for having reported that bug

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.2.1:

• Support for multi-threading compression (option -j on the command line) and the ability to restore a corrupt archive.

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.2.0:

• Support for multi-threaded compression (option -j)

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.1.9:

• Bug fix: it was not possible to restore an ext{2,3.4} partition if it was mounted read/write during the savefs
• Bug fix: opening an archive may fail in restfs for no reason

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.1.8:

• Preservation of the reiser4 filesystem attributes (label, uuid, block-size)
• Preservation of the jfs filesystem attributes (label, uuid)

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.1.4:

• Preservation of the reiserfs-3.x attributes (label, uuid, block-size)
• Fixed bugs about atime/mtime properties which could have be dropped for files

What is new in version FSArchiver 0.1.3:

• Preservation of the ext2/ext3 attributes (label, uuid, block-size)
• Added support for bzip2 compression