I've got a Redhat 5 server running Samba, and two dualboot CentOS 5 workstations. Until we get a better backup strategy, I'm backing up the workstations to the server via mounting a shared samba drive to /mnt. Trying tar cvf /mnt/samba_share/backup.tar /* eventually yields backing up /mnt, which produces an unwanted loop, including /mnt/samba_share I looked at tar with --exclude /mnt but didn't seem to get the results I wanted. I tried dump, which looked like it was working, but I have no idea what files it was backing up, and couldn't find an option in the man page to have it show me the files. I would have let it go, but since I couldn't be sure about /mnt recusion, I opted out of it. I ended up, for now, tarring each top-level directory to its own tar file, except, of course, for /mnt. What do people suggest? Thanks. Scott