tih@barsoom.nhh.no (Tom Ivar Helbekkmo) (04/07/90)
overby@plains.UUCP (Glen Overby) writes: >In article <613@unicorn.WWU.EDU> phil@unicorn.WWU.EDU (Phil Nelson) writes: >>IBM XT). I was using tar and vol to back up my hard disk. Tar started >>generating a message "Out of memory" before every file it was reading. > >tar keeps a record of every file it archives, probably to keep tabs on >hard-linked files so that it will only write out one copy of the file (the >subsequent copies will simply be references to the first one). This is downright unnecessary: Tar should only keep track of those files it has written that have a link-count greater than one. In addition, it should decrement it when it writes a "linked to" record in the archive, so that it can free up the memory once all links have been accounted for. That's the way I did it when I changed the 1.2 tar to be suitable for backups, anyway. -tih -- Tom Ivar Helbekkmo, NHH, Bergen, Norway. Telephone: +47-5-959205 tih@barsoom.nhh.no, thelbekk@norunit.bitnet, edb_tom@debet.nhh.no