Backup linux to ftp server
Solution 1:
You could try duplicity, it can make incremental backups and send them to a FTP server, gmail, Amazon S3...
Duplicity backs directories by producing encrypted tar-format volumes and uploading them to a remote or local file server. Because duplicity uses librsync, the incremental archives are space efficient and only record the parts of files that have changed since the last backup. Because duplicity uses GnuPG to encrypt and/or sign these archives, they will be safe from spying and/or modification by the server.
Solution 2:
Try streaming tar or dump into ncftpput. Sometimes the simplest stuff works most reliably...
Solution 3:
This might help... http://www.miek.nl/projects/rdup/ - used bacula sometimes myself (is ok... may not solve your issues tho).