Determine how many days ago to backup. You can use either a number, or the word "last". If you use the word "last", paxbac will only backup those files that have been modified since the last backup. You should only use "last" if you are appending to an existing archive.

Set the level of interaction for paxbac. The lower the level, the least amount of messages and prompts.

Append the the backup to an existing archive.

Set the type of medium for your backups. The default is "cd". The only other choice is "ask", which prompts paxbac to pause between each slice of data to allow you to copy the data to your removable media.

Execute the argument of script after each slice of data is made. If the exit result of running the script is not zero, paxbac will give you the option of trying again.

image tells paxbac to create a CD image of the pax archives and other data. By default, when using the medium or script options, paxbac does not make a CD image, so use this option if you want to copy a CD image rather than a directory.

Pause once after the size of the backup is determined. This allows you to go into the paxbac home directory and look at the "files_created_today" file and "files_excluded_today" file to make sure nothing has been excluded or included inappropriately.

By default, each time paxbac tries to verify a CD, it gives a long warning message instructing you what to do if the pax archive is corrupt and you therefore see an ambiguous message. If you understand what to do, you may not want to be reminded each time by a message that in itself looks like an error. Using this option will insure that you don't see the message.

Run paxbac in a test mode, in which no CD images will be created and mounted, but not burned.

By default, paxbac verifies the data copied on to each disk. If you don't want to verify each disk, use this option.

paxbac can create a test file in one of the directories you backup and then test for the presence of this file on the members you create. This allows you an extra test when running paxbac. The file will be removed from your hard drive before paxbac, but will remain on the member. However, the actual file name will be put on the stale list (present on each disk) of files that should be removed if you have to restore your data.

Read the file to determine what to backup. This saves you the effort of having to type each directory every time you want to backup, and insures that you are always backing up the same directories each time.

Replace disks in your set that are lost or damaged. paxbac finds the paths of the files that were on that disk and created new disks with those files. If the files no longer exist on your hard drive, paxbac cannot restore them.

Show the current configuration settings.

Show the information about backup sets.

Print a help message.