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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!newsfeed.nacamar.de!fu-berlin.de!irz401!orion.sax.de!uriah.heep!news From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: dump and compression Date: 23 Mar 1997 19:42:38 GMT Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden Lines: 30 Message-ID: <5h413e$ii7@uriah.heep.sax.de> References: <5glaem$io6$2@kayrad.ziplink.net> <5gma1u$icd@ui-gate.utell.co.uk> <y7zk9n5cgvk.fsf@hzsbc259.nl.lucent.com> Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch) NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.heep.sax.de Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Newsreader: knews 0.9.6 X-Phone: +49-351-2012 669 X-PGP-Fingerprint: DC 47 E6 E4 FF A6 E9 8F 93 21 E0 7D F9 12 D6 4E Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:37629 Peter Mutsaers <plm@lucent.com> wrote: > Yes, and I think he's not alone with that problem. When I create tapes > with tar I almost always use gzip to compress (-z flag to gnu TAR). It > would indeed be very useful if dump/restore could do the same. In particular, if dump would do it on a per file basis (per i-node, more exactly), as opposed to applying it to the output stream. This way, if you encounter a medium error, only one file is lost, not the remainder of the entire dump. This should best be done by storing the filename with the .gz suffix, and the file itself in standard gzip format. This way, a restore that doesn't understand compressed dumps would still be able to extract the file, but just with a .gz suffix. In order to trace which files have actually been compressed by dump, and which were already .gz originally, use a new flagbit. This should not be very difficult using libz, but will bloat two statically-linked binaries in /sbin. However, piping through gzip would be less optimal (you depend on additional binaries then). ``Just do it!'' :-) -- 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. ;-)