Henry Nelson wrote:
[ ... ]
>   DUMP: Date of this level 0 dump: Sat Jun 17 21:57:25 2006
>   DUMP: Date this dump completed:  Sat Jun 17 21:57:27 2006
>   DUMP: Average transfer rate: 2772 KB/s
>   DUMP: Broken pipe
>   DUMP: The ENTIRE dump is aborted.
> 
> Why those last two lines?

That implies that the restore process closed the pipe before dump expected it 
to, or possibly that the restore process exitted uncleanly with an error...?

Perhaps try:

    dump -f - /var | (cd /mnt; restore -rf - && sleep 5 \
       || echo "somethings wrong with restore!"; true)

...to see what's going on?

(If adding just the sleep fixes the problem, someone should change the SIGPIPE 
handler in dump to be a bit less excited if EPIPE happens after the dump has 
completed.  :-)

> Is there some tool for checking the backup?

diff -r and rsync come to mind.

-- 
-Chuck