From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Jun 11 12:50:41 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 29AFF16A4CE for ; Fri, 11 Jun 2004 12:50:41 +0000 (GMT) Received: from sccrmhc13.comcast.net (sccrmhc13.comcast.net [204.127.202.64]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7C16E43D1F for ; Fri, 11 Jun 2004 12:50:38 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from freebsd-questions-local@be-well.ilk.org) Received: from be-well.no-ip.com ([66.30.196.44]) by comcast.net (sccrmhc13) with ESMTP id <200406111250140160082kvde>; Fri, 11 Jun 2004 12:50:14 +0000 Received: by be-well.no-ip.com (Postfix, from userid 1147) id D56CC74; Fri, 11 Jun 2004 08:50:17 -0400 (EDT) Sender: lowell@be-well.ilk.org To: sad@mailaps.org References: <20040609204817.A1736@tiscali.de> From: Lowell Gilbert Date: 11 Jun 2004 08:50:17 -0400 In-Reply-To: <20040609204817.A1736@tiscali.de> Message-ID: <448yeu5kdy.fsf@be-well.ilk.org> Lines: 58 User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.3 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: two tar issues: man page and --totals behaviour X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2004 12:50:41 -0000 "Stefan A. Deutscher" writes: > Hi folks, > > just noticed two issues with tar on FreeBSD 5.1 (actually, it is > GNU tar 1.13.25): It's a heavily modified version of Gnu tar, actually. > (1) The man page is somewhat out of sync with what tar --help shows > in terms of options > > Should I submit a PR for that one, or send a bug report to the gnu > tar maintainers, or both? The man page isn't a primary documentation method; the *real* manual is in Gnu info. ["info tar"] It's probably the local (FreeBSD) changes that haven't gotten documented. > (2) The option --totals, according to the docs and --help, is supposed > to show the bytes _written_. It does not quite: > > - When running plain 'tar c', it actually shows the bytes written. > > - When running tar with any of the built-in compression flags, such > as 'tar -c -{z,Z,y}', it shows the exact same number of bytes as > when invoked without these flags. > > While, technically, it might show the bytes written _to_ the > compression program, for all practical purposes it appears to show > what was _read_ from disk. The space used on tape may be > significantly smaller. > > I understand that for backwards compatibility one cannot just change > the behaviour of this flag from one day to another. Fixing the docs > might be the easy way out, but I'd like to suggest the addition of > some flag that reports what was actually written _to_ the tape > device. > > Even if the device-internal HW compression may change what actually > ends up on tape (i.e. compressing uncompressed stuff somewhat while > probably not gaining anything on gzip or bzip2), this would give a > better indicator of tape usage and space left on a tape. This would be fairly tricky to implement with an external compression filter in software, never mind in hardware. > I have no idea whether this has been discussed here already, google > didn't like me enough to turn up relevant threads. Nor do I know how > the upcoming bsdtar handles that flag's behaviour. I don't think bsdtar has such a flag, actually. > Again, should I submit a PR for that one, or send a bug report to > the gnu tar folks, or both? If you have written the code to do what you're saying, please do submit it.