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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.rmit.EDU.AU!news.unimelb.EDU.AU!munnari.OZ.AU!news.mel.connect.com.au!news.mira.net.au!inquo!bofh.dot!in-news.erinet.com!bug.rahul.net!rahul.net!a2i!ddsw1!news.mcs.net!not-for-mail From: les@MCS.COM (Leslie Mikesell) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: dump on a DAT tape .. Date: 19 May 1996 23:47:49 -0500 Organization: /usr/lib/news/organi[sz]ation Lines: 50 Message-ID: <4nothl$f3f@Mercury.mcs.com> References: <4mfon3$gib@news.simplex.nl> <4miicv$sb9@uriah.heep.sax.de> <4nd0kh$1bm@anorak.coverform.lan> <4nlka4$1l5@uriah.heep.sax.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: mercury.mcs.com In article <4nlka4$1l5@uriah.heep.sax.de>, J Wunsch <joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de> wrote: >tar is inherently broken. It only allows for 100 (or 255 -- Posix >tar, but that's already another restriction) characters path name >length, many tar's don't allow for device nodes or FIFO's, tar has >problems extracting hardlinks if you wanna extract a subtree only, not >all tar's handle the permissions correctly. tar's that can handle >device nodes still break for 32-bit major/minor numbers as they are >found in 4.4BSD descendants. GNUtar fixes most of these problems. Not sure about that last one. >tar is certainly the least common denominator, but that doesn't make >it a good _backup_ program, only a good _data interchange_ program. > >(Don't tell me you won't be able to find another machine using UFS >around. :) Maybe, maybe not. I want to be able to read back any tape on any machine. >cpio has fewer braindamages than tar, particularly SVR4 cpio. Older >cpio's are not much better however. Ever try to write a cpio archive on sysvr4 that you can read on earlier versions? On a filesystem containing >64K inodes? Not a pretty sight. Fortunately GNU cpio can be compiled for non-svr4 systems to read the now-standard format. >dump/restore are only sharable among UFS architectures (and you will >even find byteorder stuff in restore, suggesting it's possible to >e.g. restore a SunOS 4 dump tape on FreeBSD!), but have the advantage >to be featured for a good backup program. They don't suffer from any >of the abovementioned braindeadnesses, and offer some other nice >features like a multilevel incremental backup system that is even >capable of deleting files that disappeared on the master between the >backup increments, GNUtar can do this too, although the documentation for the option leaves a lot to be desired. >a TOC that's right at the beginning of your 5-tape >backup, and the ability to interactively determine which files to >restore (in a simple command-line shell-like interface). Tar isn't so handy in this respect. Les Mikesell les@mcs.com