To solve the vibration control problem of an axially moving system with the system parametric uncertainties and high ac-/deceleration, an adaptive backstepping boundary control is proposed by using the Lyapunov's direct method, adaptive technique and classical backstepping control, where the signum function is adopted to handle the unknown boundary disturbance. Besides, due to the discontinuities of the sign function, a saturation function is designed to replace the sign function for avoiding the chattering problem and then the performance of the vibration control is improved. With the proposed control, the system parameter uncertainties are compensated and the stability of the closed-loop system is ensured. Finally, simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed control algorithm.