weimar@csgrad.cs.vt.edu (06/25/91)
The Question has probably been asked several times: How do people do backup on the slab (with floppies)? I just got the GNU tar (multivolume tar), but I couldn't get it to use multiple floppies. What filename do I use? ( /dev/fd0a ?? or /Disk or whatever the name is ) Thanks, Joerg. -- +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-=+-+-+-+-+-=-+-+-+-=-=-+-+-+-+-+-+-=-+-+-=-=-+-+-=- Joerg R. Weimar weimar@vtcc1.cc.vt.edu ( Internet 128.173.4.10) Dept. of Computer Science, Virginia Tech
oneill@cs.sfu.ca (Richard Oneill) (06/25/91)
In article <1321@creatures.cs.vt.edu> weimar@csgrad.cs.vt.edu () writes: >The Question has probably been asked several times: > How do people do backup on the slab (with floppies)? Patiently! >I just got the GNU tar (multivolume tar), but I couldn't get it to >use multiple floppies. I understand you have to tweak things somewhat (give a command line option), and even then you have to kludge things to get it to eject the disks. I was unhappy with this, and I wanted to compress my archives to minimise the number of disks needed (even though compressed archives are less 'safe' than uncompressed ones). GNU tar can't compress *and* do multi-volume archives (It can't yet anyway). For this reason, I wrote a quickie C program to do direct I/O to floppy, I use it like this: tar -cf - files | compress -c | rawdisk -w and rawdisk -r | uncompress -c | tar -xvf - rawdisk -w reads stdin and writes to as many disks as required rawdisk -r reads disks and writes to stdout, reading until the pipe is broken or the program killed. It doesn't require GNU tar (or even tar :-). If you think it would help, I'll send you a copy. If loads-a-people want it, I'll put it on the archives. If no one cares, I'll shut up. Richard. P.S. I have strange programming habits (I hardly ever write C - my language of choice is Standard ML) and I wrote it for me. I use it to do my backups, but then I'm insane. IF YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE FACT IT MAY HAVE BUGS IN IT AND SO COULD COMPLETELY SCREW YOUR BACKUPS DON'T BOTHER TO ASK ME FOR IT. -- Composing a suitably apt and witty .signature is left | oneill@fornax.UUCP as an exercise for the reader. | oneill@cs.sfu.ca