Xref: utzoo comp.unix.questions:8791 comp.unix.wizards:10435 Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!att!ttrdc!levy From: levy@ttrdc.UUCP (Daniel R. Levy) Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.wizards Subject: tar frustration (was Re: relative pathname question!) Message-ID: <2858@ttrdc.UUCP> Date: 12 Aug 88 04:20:15 GMT References: <1670003@hpcilzb.HP.COM> <5762@super.upenn.edu> <1414@valhalla.ee.rochester.edu> Organization: AT&T, Skokie, IL Lines: 23 > >tar cf /dev/whatever * > I would suggest using "." rather than "*" to avoid the expansion of the commmand > line to ridiculously long lengths. While the meaning is certainly different, I > have yet to think of any problems with this method when the intent is to tar up > the contents of my current directory. All this points up a "feature" of tar which I find frustrating: if I want tar to tape-archive a large number of files randomly scattered all over the file system (such as for an incremental backup) I'm SOL because tar wants to be told either a directory to completely search or file names to archive, via the argument list. "cpio" circumvents this problem, since I can feed it a list of files, but what if I don't WANT to use cpio? (Say, in a situation which would trigger a known cpio bug, like inode numbers greater than 65535 or uid's less than 0 [a la SUN] when doing cpio -c.) Using the "r" option of tar with repeated invocations of tar would work all right, but would be blastedly slow because it would rewind the tape over and over and over. If I used the no-rewind tape device, I'd get a whole bunch of little tar archives, one for each invocation. -- |------------Dan Levy------------| THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED HEREIN ARE MINE ONLY | Bell Labs Area 61 (R.I.P., TTY)| AND ARE NOT TO BE IMPUTED TO AT&T. | Skokie, Illinois | |-----Path: att!ttbcad!levy-----|