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From: Don Yuniskis <dgy@rtd.com>
Message-Id: <199608161557.IAA19105@seagull.rtd.com>
Subject: Re: File System on a tape
To: batie@agora.rdrop.com (Alan Batie)
Date: Fri, 16 Aug 1996 08:57:12 -0700 (MST)
Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.org
In-Reply-To: <m0urQJ0-0008rKC@agora.rdrop.com> from "Alan Batie" at Aug 16, 96 07:55:22 am
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It seems that Alan Batie said:
> 
> > With a file system on tape, you can boot and then just mount the tape
> > and 'cp /tape/what/ever/you/want /wherever/you/want/it'.
> 
> What's wrong with 'tar xvf /dev/rst0' for an installation?  Now for a

Nothing!  *But* if you want to extract one *file*, tar sucks eggs.
Also, you can't *run* a system off of a tar image (whereas you
*could* mount a tape filesystem and execute whatever is on the
tape!)

> restore, it might be a useful model, but even there, it's just about
> as fast to 'tar tvf /dev/rst0 > tape.list', and you can go watch a movie
> in the meantime instead of waiting a few minutes to go to this directory,
> a few minutes to that directory, etc.  It would be almost as bad as
> navigating the web :-)
> 
> I'm surprised I haven't yet heard mention of the DEC tape system.  I seem
> to recall that they had a system (PDP-8 version?) that ran solely off tape.

TU58's?

--don