Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1998 23:29:11 +0200 (MET DST) From: Joerg Schilling <schilling@fokus.gmd.de> To: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: GNU-Tar should be updated Message-ID: <199806262129.XAA10916@sherwood.gmd.de>
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I found your discussion about GNUtar vs. star via dejanews.
If you want to keep me in this discussion, please Cc: to me.
tar: /dev/wd0s3: minor number too large; not dumped
seems to be a message that was added to the modified FreeBSD
version of GNUtar. The actual GNUtar does not give this message because
no tests are made.
The method FreeBSD is using for major/minor device nodes is problematic.
1) if deviates from all other UNIX implementations in that it
don't uses a method that uses only shifts/masks.
2) It uses more than 21 bits in the minor device number
1) is currently responsible that star is not able to archive
FreeBSD devices in the old pre-POSIX 'star' format
which uses a 32 bit value for st_rdev and stores the
number of bits in the minor mumber for portability.
2) is responsible for the fact that no 100% POSIX compliant tar
not GNUtar will ever be able to store FreeBSD minor numbers.
To store 32 bits in the minor number, it is neccesary to implement
star's 3rd level from the large file concept:
1st level stores 8 GB in 33 bit numbers and is POSIX compliant.
2nd level stores 1 TB in hex representation in 10 bytes
3rd level stores 1000 PB in ato64l representation in 10 bytes.
This also allows to store 36 bits in ato46l representation in 6 bytes
and thus will allow to archive the FreeBSD device files.
Jörg
EMail:joerg@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
js@cs.tu-berlin.de (uni) If you don't have iso-8859-1
schilling@fokus.gmd.de (work) chars I am J"org Schilling
URL: http://www.fokus.gmd.de/usr/schilling ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix
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