*BSD News Article 50821


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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
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From: tom@tarush.chattanooga.net (Tom Rush)
Subject: tar -M broken?
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]
Organization: Rush Co.
Message-ID: <DEuIBx.Bwx@tarush.chattanooga.net>
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 1995 13:19:09 GMT
Lines: 20

I am not fortunate enough to own a tape drive, so if I want to archive
anything at all, I have to do it on floppies.  A long time ago (when I
used the "other" free *nix), I found the multi-volume capabilities of
GNU tar quite useful.

However, I have not been able to get the FreeBSD version of tar to create
a multi-volume archive.  If I use "tar -cvMf /dev/fd0.1440 <dirname>" it
fills up the floppy with however many files will fit; then it just displays
all the other file names in turn and finishes without ever prompting for
another disk.  If then try to extract from that same disk, it works
properly, i.e. reads to the end, then prompts for disk 2 (which, of course,
I don't have!).

I read the man page and even tried the '-F' option, but no luck.  Am I
missing something here, or is this as broken as it seems to be?

Thanks..
-- 
Tom Rush
tom@tarush.chattanooga.net