From owner-freebsd-stable Tue Apr 27 18: 2:43 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mailfw1.ford.com (mailfw1.ford.com [136.1.1.26]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 9D1AC14E83 for ; Tue, 27 Apr 1999 18:02:41 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from boconno6@ford.com) Received: by mailfw1.ford.com id VAA02170 (InterLock SMTP Gateway 3.0 for freebsd-stable@freebsd.org); Tue, 27 Apr 1999 21:02:38 -0400 Message-Id: <199904280102.VAA02170@mailfw1.ford.com> Received: by mailfw1.ford.com (Internal Mail Agent-2); Tue, 27 Apr 1999 21:02:38 -0400 Organization: Ford Motor Company of Australia Limited. ACN 004 116 223 Received: by mailfw1.ford.com (Internal Mail Agent-1); Tue, 27 Apr 1999 21:02:38 -0400 Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1999 11:02:34 +1000 From: "Brian O'Connor. (CF583173) HO 2nd Floor" To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Does tar do sparse files these days Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.91.1 Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Hello This is not specific to freebsd-stable, but you guys are more than likely to know the answer. In the dim dark days of yore(90-91) I was advised not to do full backups using tar. There were problems with sparse files, and device files etc. Since then I've used dump or its varients on various implementations of unix when I've wanted a trust worthy backup. At Ford they use a commercial network backup product called Netbackup (from veritas) it uses tar format for its backups, so much so that you can recover a netbackup tape using tar -xvf .... This suprised the hell out me, has tar format changed in the last few years? or was mistaken all along? boc -- ________________________________________________________________________________ Brian O'Connor UNIX Consultant and bad photographer Ford Email: boconno6@ford.com Ford AUS Telephone: +61 03 93597848 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message