heinzg,
I'm not enough of a shell script guru to analyze all you have done, but from what I have read of it so far, my hat is off to you for an extremely well-thought-out script. It's great to have the development site you linked, but if I could presume to make a suggestion, it'd be nice if you would post either the script, or at least a brief discussion with link to your development page, on the wiki under the open-source backup section (
here) so that when people are reading about backup methodologies, this one is added to the mix. This will make it more likely (1) that those who need it find your script, and (2) that you'll get a wider variety of people testing and providing feedback to you. Kinda what we call a win-win!
Kudos for your hard work!
Dan