Burt Home Page

News
November 23, 1999 Burt paper presented at LISA 99 is available
May 12, 1999 Burt v2.4.7 is available
February 11, 1999 Daily ChangeLog is online
October 15, 1998 Burt v2.4.1 is available
August 27, 1998 Burt Backup Type Repository is online

Links
Download
Release ChangeLog
Daily ChangeLog
Burt Backup Type Repository
Installation
Burt documentation
burt-users mailing list information
burt-users mailing list archive
Scriptics Home Page (Tcl/Tk Home)

Introduction

Burt, the backup and recovery tool, is an extension for Tcl/Tk 8.0 designed to perform backups to and recoveries from tapes. A Burt installation consists of the Burt extension module and a set of Tcl/Tk 8.0 scripts to make use of that module to perform backups.

Burt can backup virtually any system imaginable because of its integration with Tcl/Tk. At the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Computer Sciences Department, we use Burt to backup about 350 workstations and a substantial AFS filespace, for a total of roughly 750 GB of data.

Why Burt is better than the rest

There are a few reasons why Burt is better than, say, Amanda or any other backup software available. Here's a brief list detailing some of those reasons.

Flexibility: because Burt is a Tcl/Tk extension, it has unparalleled flexibility not only in terms of the design of the user interface but also with respect to the types of systems that can be supported. As far as the interface goes, the administrator can create a completely custom interface if they desire. And as far as supported systems, the list is really limited only by the resourcefulness of the administrator -- if you can write a Tcl/Tk function that returns a data stream, you can support a new type of system.
Speed: Burt is very fast. It allows for the parallel backup of multiple streams of data directly to tape, which in turn allows for speedy backups.
Reliability: Burt checksums every packet of data that is written to the tape; those checksums are then stored on the tape and can be read off the tape and verified against the actual data read from the tape to ensure the integrity of the data.

last modified Thursday October 15, 1998

eric melski