> > My fundamental question is why dump claims it cannot access what I > want it to back up. What's to say other solutions - Amanda, etc, > will work any better? I want to know how to resolve the source > problem before looking into other products. How will BackupPC or > Amanda do any better? > well i have not come accross the error(s) you listed when using amanda to do the backup - You posted the quetion to ask for advice and the advice that i would give to solve your problem would be to use amanda to run the backup, which may or may not call dump, as for me this is a known good configuration.