[ On Sunday, January 26, 2003 at 23:53:45 (+0100), Xavier HUMBERT wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: Removing GNU tar and GNU cpio from src?
>
> So, please tell me why was the -W --verify flag removed, to begin with ?

"removed"?  Nothing at all was ever removed from the new 'tar'
implementation as far as I can tell!

Perhaps you might ask Keith Muller why some kind of file-by-file verify
option was never added in the first place -- I sure as heck can't tell
you.


> Second, do you mean people who did their backups since the early Unix
> years with tar (which had not been hijackd by gnu, at those times)

(FYI, 'tar' has _never_ been "hijacked" by GNU -- but NetBSD seems to
have been hijacked by GNU, or at least the GNU 'tar')

> including amanda developers, are fools ?

I sure as hell don't know where you got that idea from.

Of course personally I wouldn't ever use anything like 'tar' or 'cpio'
or 'pax', etc. to back up filesystems unless they really know a heck of
a lot about what they're doing and what risks they may face by doing so.

On NetBSD Amanda does just fine with proper 'dump' backups which of
course face none of these silly issues because 'dump' is a proper backup
program.

Don't you know yet that PAX and the various TAR and CPIO formats are
archive interchange formats, not backup formats?


> NB : my "real life" software backup, which costs a lots of bucks,
> produces *every night* at *ton* of errors. Open files on Windows,
> mailboxes chaged between write and verify,etc. Thanks God, he does not
> give up for that reason...

I don't know what you're talking about here either.  NetBSD 'pax' (and
its 'tar' and 'cpio' front ends) does not give up if a file changes --
it just reports an error (from buf_subs.c):

        else if (arcn->sb.st_mtime != sb.st_mtime)
                tty_warn(1, "File %s was modified during copy to archive",
                        arcn->org_name);

apparently just like your commercial software package also does.

Isn't it nice when NetBSD's free tools have some of the same high
quality features as expensive commercial software?

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098;            <g.a.woods@ieee.org>;           <woods@robohack.ca>
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; VE3TCP; Secrets of the Weird <woods@weird.com>