On my Linux machine I'm using a home made backup script which is actually a few rsync calls. I've tested my restores and everything seems to be working, but are there any possible problems with this setup?
My main concern is atomicity of this backup. As far as I know, files in Linux aren't locked. Can files be copied if only partially written? Is it possible that databases, xml files or any other frequently written files that have a structure or a syntax could end up broken or unusable at a backup location?