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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!foxhound.dsto.gov.au!fang.dsto.gov.au!myall.awadi.com.au!myall!blymn From: blymn@awadi.com.au (Brett Lymn) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development Subject: Re: File Truncation Philosophy Date: 6 Apr 93 12:51:57 Organization: AWA Defence Industries Lines: 26 Message-ID: <BLYMN.93Apr6125157@mallee.awadi.com.au> References: <C4tJ6C.C17@ns1.nodak.edu> <CGD.93Apr1173018@eden.CS.Berkeley.EDU> NNTP-Posting-Host: mallee.awadi.com.au In-reply-to: cgd@eden.CS.Berkeley.EDU's message of 1 Apr 93 17:30:18 >>>>> On 1 Apr 93 17:30:18, cgd@eden.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Chris G. Demetriou) said: Chris> NNTP-Posting-Host: eden.cs.berkeley.edu Chris> In article <C4tJ6C.C17@ns1.nodak.edu> tinguely@plains.NoDak.edu (Mark Tinguely) writes: >The philosophy question is should we change "cp" and "cat" to unlink (remove) >the file before opening? Or even lower in the filesystem (as would need be in >the restore example). Chris> no. if you're using a program to backup/restore the contents Chris> of your hard disk, use one that's smart enough to do it right. Chris> despite all the attempts to make it so, GNU tar is *not* Chris> a valid backup/restore tool. Chris> dump/restore is, they're not at all hard to use, Chris> and, best of all, they work *marvelously* (esp. if what you're dumping/ Chris> restoring to/from is local-- apparently there are some bugs in the remote Chris> tape handling, but they're fixable). I agree, dump/restore is a good way to do backups, not only can you interactively restore files individually but it has automatic support for multi-volume archives. The only downer is that is does not compress the archive :-( -- Brett Lymn