aglew@crhc.uiuc.edu (Andy Glew) (10/22/90)
A while back I posted a list of a number of consistency checking
scripts, for use both by system administrators and regular users.
To this list, let me add another, for regular users:
Ensure that none of the relative pathnames below your working
directories ($HOME, etc.) exceed, say, 95 characters in length -
because tar has a limit at 100 characters, and cpio has a limit at 128
characters (on my SUN, at least).
It's a real pain having to tar subdirectories and/or rename files when
trying to back off all of a user's stuff (in this case, I'm the user)
to tape.
Grumble...
--
Andy Glew, a-glew@uiuc.edu [get ph nameserver from uxc.cso.uiuc.edu:net/qi]prc@erbe.se (Robert Claeson) (10/23/90)
In a recent article aglew@crhc.uiuc.edu (Andy Glew) writes: > Ensure that none of the relative pathnames below your working >directories ($HOME, etc.) exceed, say, 95 characters in length - >because tar has a limit at 100 characters, and cpio has a limit at 128 >characters (on my SUN, at least). This leads me to express this major question that has sprung to my mind several times during the last few years: *WHY* hasn't anyone designed a portable archive and backup format that can handle at least as long pathnames as a UNIX system allows, ie 1024 characters? -- Robert Claeson |Reasonable mailers: rclaeson@erbe.se ERBE DATA AB | Dumb mailers: rclaeson%erbe.se@sunet.se | Perverse mailers: rclaeson%erbe.se@encore.com These opinions reflect my personal views and not those of my employer.
dik@cwi.nl (Dik T. Winter) (10/23/90)
In article <1990Oct22.185817.1739@erbe.se> prc@erbe.se (Robert Claeson) writes: > *WHY* hasn't anyone designed a portable archive and backup format > that can handle at least as long pathnames as a UNIX system allows, > ie 1024 characters? > That would still not be enough. (Although there is a limit of 1024 characters on path names you can use, the length of the actual path to get at the file/ directory can be longer. But you can not get at it in a single command/ system call.) Another approach would be to include information about directories (ala BSD tar) and use this information in the construction of the path name for the file. You need also information about leaving directories etc. This is all done in archival systems for the Macintosh that allow archiving of folders aka directories. The drawback is that a bad block might distort the directory information, but this is minor. Also multi volume backups can get hairy, but with increasing media sizes... Just some thoughts. -- dik t. winter, cwi, amsterdam, nederland dik@cwi.nl