davidsen@steinmetz.ge.com (William E. Davidsen Jr) (10/05/88)
Having just gotten a posting about afio, I dusted off my old copy,
added a patch I've been saving, and tried it out again. I found some
limitations, which may be because I'm not doing it right, the docs don't
mention the feature, or I have an old version. If these are real
limitations (I can't call them bugs in fairness) I guess I stay with
cpio.
1) How to restore a single file? In cpio I say "cpio -ic file < archive"
and only "file" is restored, with some versions supporting a quoted
wildcard name as well. I can't seem to do this with afio, and I really
can't restore 15+MB from a tape to get one back.
2) The -n (save new files) option saves new files, but seems to restore
the file if it has the same date. This changes the ctime, and makes the
restore run very slowly.
3) The -x option doesn't seem to work unless you a root. Since I can
change owner and "give away" a file, this can be done on a user restore
as well. If this is done as user any setuid bits are cleared.
4) There was one place where NULL was used instead of int zero. This
caused complaints about comparing an int and pointer. In ANSI C NULL is
a macro expanding to a pointer constant. I fixed that one to get a
compile.
Am I missing something, or will everyone say "fix it and post the
diffs?" Having fixed (4) already, I could do the others, but if I have
an old version perhaps someone could point to an ftp or uucp server
which has the current version.
Respond by mail or post depending on the public interest of your reply.
Thanks
--
bill davidsen (wedu@ge-crd.arpa)
{uunet | philabs}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -mejfh@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US (The Beach Bum) (10/07/88)
In article <12307@steinmetz.ge.com> davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes: > Having just gotten a posting about afio, I dusted off my old copy, >added a patch I've been saving, and tried it out again. I found some >limitations, which may be because I'm not doing it right, the docs don't >mention the feature, or I have an old version. If these are real >limitations (I can't call them bugs in fairness) I guess I stay with >cpio. The author, in his transfinite wisdom, changed a few of the options so that they do not work the same way as they do with cpio. There are many new options, some flags have changed, and a couple of idioms [ like piping the archive by default to stdin or stdout ] no longer exist. A very good reading of the afio docs is always in order. >1) How to restore a single file? In cpio I say "cpio -ic file < archive" > and only "file" is restored, with some versions supporting a quoted > wildcard name as well. With afio it's afio -iy file archive and you get the exact same result. If you wanted all but file you'd use afio -iY file archive >Am I missing something, or will everyone say "fix it and post the >diffs?" Having fixed (4) already, I could do the others, but if I have >an old version perhaps someone could point to an ftp or uucp server >which has the current version. I think a good re-reading of the docs [ and a re-writing as well ... ] is in order. The program is fantastic, however, the author didn't bother to stick with cpio idioms, which is what everyone is used to. If you do find a bug I'm certain the author would love to receive the diffs. I had an email discussion back when it first came out and he seemed very reasonable. -- John F. Haugh II (jfh@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US) HASA, "S" Division "Why waste negative entropy on comments, when you could use the same entropy to create bugs instead?" -- Steve Elias
davidsen@steinmetz.ge.com (William E. Davidsen Jr) (10/12/88)
In article <7649@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US> jfh@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US (The Beach Bum) writes: | >1) How to restore a single file? In cpio I say "cpio -ic file < archive" | > and only "file" is restored, with some versions supporting a quoted | > wildcard name as well. | | With afio it's | | afio -iy file archive | | and you get the exact same result. If you wanted all but file you'd use The documentation certainly doesn't say this, and the copy I have doesn't work this way. My docs say that the argument of -y is a *prefix* and all files starting with that string will be restored. As a simple case of the problems I hit with that, consider trying the restore foo1, and getting files foo10..foo19, foo100-foo199, using prefix notation I get about 7MB of matches. Thanks to all who mentioned this by mail, I appreciate your time in trying to help me with this. -- bill davidsen (wedu@ge-crd.arpa) {uunet | philabs}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen "Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me