Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1999 15:41:05 -0700 (PDT) From: Mike Meyer <mwm@phone.net> To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Does tar do sparse files these days Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9904281537200.8949-100000@guru.phone.net> In-Reply-To: <7g7vdc$3e6$1@mips.rhein-neckar.de>
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On 28 Apr 1999, Christian Weisgerber wrote: > Brian O'Connor. CF583173 HO 2nd Floor <boconno6@ford.com> wrote: > > > 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. > > There still are. > > GNU tar, which FreeBSD uses, can't handle 32-bit dev_t. Apparently this > is a limitation of the archive format. Yup. If you check the source (/usr/src/gnu/usr.bin/tar/tar.h) you'll see that it's using an eight byte field to hold the ASCII version of the major and minor device numbers. The handbook says only dump can be trusted. I'm not sure how amanda fits into this picture. <mike To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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