>From: "Karol Pietrzak" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >It's working, but I have some problems / questions (I couldn't >find a star mailing list, so I hope I don't get beaten down for >this post):
>1. On my machine, star is SLOW... More than 7x slower on average >than GNU tar... That can't be right. >linux:~ # time star -z -x -f star-1.4a08.tar.gz -C=/tmp/ >star: 234 blocks + 9216 bytes (total of 2405376 bytes = >2349.00k). First: t makes no sense to do timings with compressed archives where tar has to call e.g. gzip to decompress the archive while running. Second: From reading further down, it turns out that you did the test on a "tiny" machine as it has been used about 12-14 years ago. In former times, star used to use 1 MB for FIFO by default. A few weeks ago, I decided to increase FIFO size for what I assume is a "modern machine". Now, star uses 1 MB (as before) on sun3 machines, 4 MB on Linux (as Linux detected mmap() a few months before and SYSV shared mem is static and limited) and 8 MB on all other machines. This usually dramatically speeds up things. You are hit by the way Linux does memory management. If Linux (with the old memory concept - I did not yet test the new one) has less than 8 MB of free memory, it becomes very very slow. If you run star as root there is a second change (made a few weeks ago) that is intended to speed up operation: It tries to lock the FIFO in memory. On your specific machine the last two changes seem to hurt you but note that this cannot be called typical behaviour. There are plans to add a way to specify the default FIFO size in /etc/default/star Note that backup speed with a DLT tape may increase by more than 10% if you use 128 MB for the FIFO. However, I won't recommend to use more than 1/4 of the total free memory of the machine. >In the last operation, star used ~15.7% of my RAM (total :32MB). > GNU tar only ~2.7%. I would have no qualms about using star >over GNU tar if it was faster even if it used more RAM. >2. There are several cool things in GNU tar that don't work in >star. Here's a list: > options :: star equivalent > o -cf :: -c -f > o -xf :: -x -f > o -C /fubar :: -C=/fubar It seems that you did not read the man pages well enough... Neither GNUtar not star list that you may combine single char BOOLEAN flags but both support them. So what is your problem? >IMO, these options should be added if not for user convenience, >then for GNU tar compatibility. ??? Please be precise so I can guess what you like.... >3. Is there a way to remove files from tar archives using star? NO, never needeed >4. I noticed the following files are installed when 'make >install'ing Schilling programs: >/usr/include/align.h >/usr/include/avoffset.h >/usr/lib/libdeflt.a >/usr/lib/libfile.a >/usr/lib/libhfs.a >/usr/lib/librscg.a >/usr/lib/libscg.a >/usr/lib/libschily.a >/usr/lib/libunls.a Well, you usually don't need them. >What are they used for? Should I include them in my RPMs? If >you take a peek at >http://home.earthlink.net/~noodlez84/rpm_packages.html , I have >a devel RPM for every Schilling package I compile. Is this the >"right" way? Sorry, I cannot check these files as I am usually using Solaris for development. On Linux, I use the SuSE system and - of course- install my tools manually. >5. Joerg Schilling: I read your GNU tar rant in the rather >lengthy README.otherbugs, and I must say, I agree with you. >Even the folks at 'file' know that GNU tar != POSIX tar: >linux:~ # file some_gnu_tar_file.tar >some_gnu_tar_file.tar: GNU tar archive >linux:~ # file some_star_archive.tar >some_star_archive.tar: POSIX tar archive Well so it seems to be cleverer about this topoic than GNU tar which cannot distinguish between both ,-) >BTW, I apologize for the length of this message. The same applies to the answer ;-) J�rg EMail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) J�rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin [EMAIL PROTECTED] (uni) If you don't have iso-8859-1 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) chars I am J"org Schilling URL: http://www.fokus.gmd.de/usr/schilling ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
