From: bet@cyclone.sbi.com (Bennett E. Todd) Subject: Re: GNU tar dies on multi-volume archive. Help. Date: 18 Jun 1992 18:35:48 GMT
In article <odiug.708783635@grildrig> odiug@grildrig.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (Guido Muesch) writes:
>Well, I have no problems with tar. You just cannot do multivolume backups
>AND compress! I think this is mentioned somewhere (manpage?).
Well, you _can_, with suitable support software:-).
# tar cf - / | compress | wrflops /dev/fd0
followed by
# rdflops /dev/fd0 | compress -d | tar tvf -
seems to work right. wrflops and rdflops can be found in a little sharchive
called floptools, I put it up on tsx-11.mit.edu and it may have migrated
elsewhere. These work particularly pleasantly for moving moderate amounts of
data between the Sparcstation on my desk and my Linux system at home.
However, though I've tried it out to convince myself it works, I don't
really like using compressed tar archives on offline media for anything
important (like backups); in case of a media error you are well and truly
hosed, since it's unlikely that compress would resynch itself perfectly. GNU
tar, on the other hand, will resynch pretty robustly and get all the data it
can back out of your archive.
-Bennett
bet@sbi.com