tar Exiting with failure status due to previous errors

I suggest a command line as the following:

tar -cvpzf sysbackup-20110821.tar.gz --one-file-system \
    --exclude=/sysbackup-20110821.tar.gz \
    --exclude=./run \
    --exclude=./tmp \
    --exclude='./home/*/.gvfs' ./

As you see, every exclude pattern becomes a relative path, and the --one-file-system option excludes /dev, /proc, /sys, and everything mounted under /media or /mnt.

Nevertheless, if you have a separate home partition, this is not backed up.

Tested on 11.10 (Oneiric, alpha3). Probably, in previous ubuntu versions you should exclude ./var/run, instead of /run.

Right click，choose "Extract here". I use this way to resolve another familiar problem. But I don't know why it can work. It looks incredibly simple, isn't it? Hopefully that can help you.