I just used tar to back up my entire root directory, and I mainly used the following community source as a reference.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BackupYourSystem/TAR

This is the command list that I entered...

Code:
tar -cvpzf backup.tar.gz --exclude=/backup.tar.gz --exclude=/proc --exclude=/lost+found --exclude=/sys --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/media --exclude=/dev /
It finished its work yet returned the following message at the end

Code:
tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors
Because of this error am not sure if this backed up correctly. I checked the location of the new compressed file and it seems like a perfectly fine tar file.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks!