[comp.unix.xenix] tar problems with SCO

marks@mgse.UUCP (Mark Seiffert) (06/28/89)

I am having a problem with SCO's tar program. i wonder if others have
had the same problem, and what they did.

I have two 337MB hard drives on a 286 clone running SCO Xenix 286 rel 2.2.1.
SCO only supports less than 65500 inodes so i have partitioned one drive
with a seperate partition for /usr/spool/. I did not want to expire news
that often, so some of my spool/news directories became quite large. The
most notable two being comp/sys/ibm/pc and comp/sys/amiga. When i try to
tar these two directories or the entire /usr/spool/ partition, tar will
start backing up the large directory repeatedly. If the tar file is a 
regular file, it will stop when the disk is full, if the tar is to a 
tape, i guess it would go forever, I stopped it at 5 60MB tapes. I talked
to the ever so knowledgable barbh at SCO and she says SCO is aware of the
of the problem, and they have fixed, and it will be released with release
3.2.4 of Xenix 286. Since this 2.2.2 seems to be current for the 286 
version, i would take a guess and say that 3.2.4 is just a little ways
off still. Has anyone had this problem with SCO's tar? Is there another
version of tar out there similiar to SCO's that does not had this bug?
is it worth paying $600+ to the vendor so i can get this type of support?



Joke of the month:
Instant Mainframe. Just Add SCO. (SCO advertisement)


-- 
Mark Seiffert,  Metairie, LA.
uucp:           rex!mgse!marks
bitnet:         marks%mgse@REX.CS.TULANE.EDU
internet:       marks%mgse@rex.cs.tulane.edu

karish@forel.stanford.edu (Chuck Karish) (06/28/89)

In article <249@mgse.UUCP> marks@mgse.UUCP (Mark Seiffert) wrote:
>I am having a problem with SCO's tar program. i wonder if others have
>had the same problem, and what they did.
>

[ Very large directories get archived repeatedly. ]
>I have two 337MB hard drives on a 286 clone running SCO Xenix 286 rel 2.2.1.

>Since this 2.2.2 seems to be current for the 286 version, ...

(My AT has 2.2.3 on it now.  I hear that the Tandy version is called
2.2.4.)

I have a different problem with SCO tar.  The SCO tar header structure
has three special fields added, to cope with files that are split
across a volume boundary.  Unfortunately, other vendors may leave
garbage in the end of the header block, or put in the information
required for POSIX tar.  This can cause SCO tar to complain about every
file on a tape, and require user intervention if certain patterns are
found.

I'd like to replace tar.

Has anyone made Mark Colburn's pax program run under XENIX?  If no one
else has made it go on a 286, I'll do it.

For those of you who don't know about pax, it supports the POSIX tar
and cpio archive formats, the traditional tar and cpio user interfaces,
and the new pax user interface created by the POSIX 1003.2 committee.
It's backward compatible with the old tar and cpio formats.
The source is freely distributable.

	Chuck Karish		{decwrl,hpda}!mindcrf!karish
	(415) 493-7277		karish@forel.stanford.edu

chip@ateng.com (Chip Salzenberg) (06/29/89)

According to marks@mgse.UUCP (Mark Seiffert):
>[...] some of my spool/news directories became quite large. [...]
>tar will start backing up the large directory repeatedly.

This is an >old< tar bug.

Try using a different backup program.  I use afio, a PD implementation of
the "cpio -c" format.  It has several advantages over tar:

	It makes more efficient use of media.
	It can read while writing (fork/write/read/wait).
	You can specify the files to be backed up however you like,
	    since the filenames come from standard input.
	    A reasonable "everything" is "find . -depth -print".

>Joke of the month:
>Instant Mainframe. Just Add SCO. (SCO advertisement)

Ever tried to use a mainframe?  They have bugs too.
-- 
You may redistribute this article only to those who may freely do likewise.
Chip Salzenberg         |       <chip@ateng.com> or <uunet!ateng!chip>
A T Engineering         |       Me?  Speak for my company?  Surely you jest!

unknown@neabbs.UUCP (RICHARD RONTELTAP) (06/30/89)

[ TAR repetetively backs up directories ]
 
I got this one too. It appears when your directory file is >32K (has
now, or has had in the past more than 2048 file entries). TAR naively
assumes the dir is smaller than 32K. Probably has something to do with
it being in small model 8088 code.
 
FIND & CPIO do not seem to have this problem. You can back up using
these.
 
Richard
(...!hp4nl!neabbs!richard)

ked@garnet.berkeley.edu (Earl H. Kinmonth) (07/03/89)

In article <3209@portia.Stanford.EDU> karish@forel.stanford.edu (Chuck Karish) writes:

>I'd like to replace tar.

My pdtar (derived from an early version of GNU tar) is available in source
form.  It runs under MSDOS - Xenix - Ultrix - BSD.  You can hack it to
your heart's content.

(Mail sent by the r or R commands will bounce.)

Earl H. Kinmonth
History Department
University of California, Davis
916-752-1636 (voice, fax [2300-0800 PDT])
916-752-0776 secretary

(bitnet) ehkinmonth@ucdavis.edu
(uucp) ucbvax!ucdavis!ucdked!cck
(telnet or 916-752-7920) cc-dnet.ucdavis.edu [128.120.2.251]
	request ucdked, login as guest,
	no password

fr@icdi10.UUCP (Fred Rump from home) (08/08/89)

In article <249@mgse.UUCP> marks@mgse.UUCP (Mark Seiffert) writes:

>Joke of the month:
>Instant Mainframe. Just Add SCO. (SCO advertisement)
>Mark Seiffert,  Metairie, LA.

Mark, I would suggest you buy Microport from your local used car lot and then 
see what kind of support you get. I really think you're barking up the wrong 
tree. You may wish to acknowledge that the 286 isn't exactly a hot Unix number 
anymore now that 4MB 386 motherboards are in the under $2k range. 

'Some' of us out here are doing all the things you wish to do as a matter of 
course but we tend to travel downstream occasionally especially when rowing
upstream gets a bit too tiring.

I hope you're not trying to make a living off the 'Instant Mainframe' cause I 
don't think they're talking about an 80286 in the ad.
Fred

PS Sorry if this upsets you, but I like the ad.  They bring in calls from the
outside world.

-- 
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