*BSD News Article 77075


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From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Best way to copy directory trees
Date: 28 Aug 1996 08:05:18 GMT
Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden
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  <MICHAELV.96Aug26221506@mindbender.serv.net>
Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch)
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michaelv@MindBender.serv.net (Michael L. VanLoon) wrote:

> 	   yes, I usually use cpio like above:
> 	   find dir0 -print | cpio -pldumv dir1
> 
> The most common sysadmin method, AFAIK, is the dual-tar:
> 
> 	tar cpf - . | ( cd /somedir/ ; tar xpf - )

Keep in mind that both tools have serious shortcomings that can become
very important on 4.4BSD systems.

. tar cannot handle long path names (old tar 100 characters, newer
  tar's 255 characters, the system allows for at least 1024 characters)

. tar cannot handle 32-bit dev nodes

. cpio can only handle 32-bit dev nodes when using -H newc or -H crc
  archive formats (which are not understood by old cpio's); this is
  not a problem with cpio -p, but only for exchanging archives
  between machines.

-- 
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. ;-)