[ On Friday, October 11, 2002 at 14:45:07 (-0400), gabriel rosenkoetter wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: FYI: upgrading GNU tar
>
> [No need to Cc me on responses to mailing lists to which I subscribe.
> I'll let you know if I want a private copy. Thanks.]

You can do that, PLEASE, by setting the reply-to header to point back at
the list.  That's what I do and it works wonders.  I tend not to try to
think too hard about who gets CCs and who doesn't unless the reply-to
was explicitly set.

It's a wonderful way to help other participants follow the discussion
over to another list too.

> On Fri, Oct 11, 2002 at 02:06:49PM -0400, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> > Why does it have to the in the main distribution?  Don't you have time
> > to install third-party software before you really need to do backups?
> 
> Because networked backups are a basic functionality I shouldn't have
> to install third-party software to perform?

Well, as we know rdump does networked backups with 'rmt' out-of-the-box,
and there are a vast number of alternative ways to get any kind of
backup archive data across a network too.  You don't really need a 'tar'
command with integrated 'rmt' support in order to do basic networked
backups out-of-the-box on NetBSD.

> > 	rdump?  :-)
> > 
> > It does support partial backups selected by filenames or directory names
> > -- you just need multiple runs if the files/directories you backup are
> > not all on the same filesystem.
> 
> But supposing I don't want my backups in dump format, but in USTAR?
> pax(1) lets me do that... but not remotely. GNU tar lets me do it,
> remotely too.

You easily can send pax output over the network with several of the
different tools included in the basic NetBSD distribution, and just
about as easily arrange to have it sent to a tape device on the remote
server too.

> If you're going to remove basic functionality that exists, right
> now, in the distributed OS, you either need to justify it really
> well (which I certainly haven't seen, but I didn't subscribe to
> tech-userlevel until just now, so maybe I missed a discussion in
> the appropriate place?), or you need to provide the functionality
> in the replacement.

Well OK, I can sort of buy that.  I haven't tried to just not having rmt
support in pax because I simply had not really thought about it before
and as far as I can remember nobody else had raised the issue until now.

However I really do have to wonder if rmt is really supported in a
modern NetBSD release, or is just a legacy feature these days.  I
haven't used rmt myself in a very very long time.

I'm certainly willing to help add rmt support to pax if there's really a
mandate to continue supporting it in NetBSD.

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

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