*BSD News Article 75412


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From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: tar on floppy
Date: 3 Aug 1996 20:24:45 GMT
Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden
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Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch)
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Alexander Hausner <alexander.hausner@bmgsk.ada.at> wrote:

> I use tar cvf /dev/fd0 <dirname> to backup a directory on a 1.44 MB
> floppy, but it does not put 1.44 MB on disk, only about 1/4 or so.

Strange.  What does it tell you then?

Btw., you are not supposed to use the buffered device for this kind of
work.  Better use the unbuffered device, /dev/rfd0.  This prevents you
from surprises with the buffering, and provides you with better error
reporting.  (The buffered devices return OK since the data have been
buffered, but can report later errors only into the syslog.  The raw
devices can report errors back to the caller, since they wait until
the IO is complete.)

-- 
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. ;-)