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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!dispatch.news.demon.net!demon!fido.news.demon.net!demon!newsgate.unisource.nl!news.unisource.nl!xs4all!plm.xs4all.nl!plm From: Peter Mutsaers <plm@xs4all.nl> Subject: Re: Tape file system X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.4.25/Emacs 19.34 Sender: plm@plm.xs4all.nl Organization: My Unorganized Home Message-ID: <87zpvu2805.fsf@plm.xs4all.nl> References: <5h0pfc$7vg@fu-berlin.de> Date: Sun, 23 Mar 1997 10:54:50 GMT Lines: 31 Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:37649 >> On 22 Mar 1997 14:14:04 GMT, gusw@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Gunther Schadow) said: GS> the tape, it doesn't work due to missing IOCTLs for the st0 driver. GS> Newfs doesn't work then either. Will it be easy to emulate a disk GS> with a tape drive? Or do we need a separate tape filesystem driver? I know someone once made a (commercial) tape filesystem for Linux. It will always be a quite different type of filesystem from a disk based filesystem, because on disk you can seek without much penalty but no tape you cannot. GS> I am asking because I feel like the tar (`Tape ARchive') is not as GS> well tailored as it could be, if it had an index at the head and would GS> quickly proceed to the position of the desired files to be extracted. GS> Dump(8) has a nice directory feature `restore -i'is very comfortable, GS> however, restore does not seek quickly but reads over the whole tape. GS> Finally would it not be a file system like thing in the end? I agree, but a filesystem implementation just to get a nice index is quite drastic. For Linux there are tools like tob or taper that do more or less what you want. Maybe these could be ported to FreeBSD. I might give tob a try. I didn't know that restore doesn't seek quickly by the way. Does anyone know why it doesn't? -- /\_/\ ( o.o ) Peter Mutsaers | Abcoude (Utrecht), | Trust is a good quality ) ^ ( plm@xs4all.nl | the Netherlands | for other people to have