Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!ncar!asuvax!mcdphx!mcdchg!ddsw1!olsa99!mje From: mje@olsa99.UUCP (Mark J Elkins) Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions Subject: Re: saving directories when they don't fit on 1 tape Message-ID: <81@olsa99.UUCP> Date: 2 Oct 89 10:55:26 GMT References: <1466@xyzzy.UUCP> Organization: Olivetti Africa Lines: 45 From article <1466@xyzzy.UUCP>, by rice@dg-rtp.dg.com (Brian Rice): > In article <1454@mdbs.UUCP> wsmith@mdbs.UUCP (Bill Smith) writes: > >>Is there an automatic, reasonably portable way to save a directory and all >>files beneath it on tape when it does not fit on a single piece of media >>and can not easily be split at the next level down in the directory tree? > > Use cpio. First, there are some cpio's which support spreading > tape files across several tapes. [Deleted example using tail and head] > Obviously, this method will fail if one file occupies, say, 160 MB > and the remaining 399 together only take 30 MB. What about using 'afio'? It has an 's' option - to specify the length of your tapes. When it hits this value, it prompts for the next tape. Its also 'cpio' compatable! ie 'find whatever -print | afio -ovs 150m /dev/streamer_tape' There is one bug however - the internal buffer size for cpio is 5120 bytes. If you backup to a tape which is not a multiple of 5 Meg, the backup works fine (it writes a partial block at the end of the tape) but when restoring - it will only read full blocks of data - so will not read any partial blocks. This is a pain because just because you are meant to be able to write 60 Meg to a 60 Meg streamer - is not always true (I can sometimes get 62 Meg). To be safe, I said "Only write 58 Meg". It writes fine - just never quite restores! What guarantee do we have that all 600 ft tapes really have at least 600 ft of tape on them? Has this problem been addressed ? The archive it writes is 'ascii cpio' format. However - when trying to restore 'ascii cpio' with 'cpio' - its possible to get problems with certain files with numbers in their names (terminfo). Does 'afio' address this problem? -- /"""\ Mark J Elkins, Olivetti Africa, Unix Software Support |o.o| UUCP: {ddsw1 | olgb1 | olnl1} !olsa99!mje \_=_/ mje@olsa99.UUCP (mje@olsa99.uunet) #define DISCLAMER