*BSD News Article 68990


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From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: dump on a DAT tape ..
Date: 20 May 1996 21:47:22 GMT
Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden
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les@MCS.COM (Leslie Mikesell) wrote:

> >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.

It breaks.  The tar in FreeBSD _is_ GNUtar.

It also breaks on pathnames > 255 chars (since this is a limitation in
the ustar format).

> >(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.

The opposite (with tar or cpio) is that you won't be able to create a
backup you are guaranteed to be able to successfully restore the
system into the exact state at the point where the backup has been
taken.

> GNUtar can do this too, although the documentation for the option
> leaves a lot to be desired.

GNUtar removes files between a level-8 and a level-9 restore?  I
wonder how it should, give that it doesn't know the idea of a table of
contents (which is IMHO required to be at the beginning of the backup
set in order to have this work).

Despite of this GNUtar != tar(generic), as much as dump(FreeBSD) !=
dump(another system).  So the entire discussion is moot.  You either
want the greatest flexibility in data exchange, or the best method to
restore your system in case of a catastrophic failure.  Both goals are
not exactly compatible.  (I personally use tar for many things, and it
happens to be GNUtar what i'm using.  But i don't use it for backups.)

-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)