Daniel Iliev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Since I didn't use a DVD at all in this process, is this a Kbackup
> > problem or a tar problem? That is the only two programs I used so I
> > assume it would be one of those two. Also note, I use ext3 on that
> > partition. All my others are reiserfs but everything done was on
> > ext3.
>From other hints, this seems to be a problem on both sides:
- The built in tar archiver is far too dumb and does not support
enough features for backups
- GNU tar often does not unpack POSIX compliant tar achives
and even sometimes has problems with it's own non-standard archives.
You may like to check the POSIX compliance of the tar archive you created to
verify at which side your problem is located:
- Fetch and install the latest star-1.5
ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/star
- call "tartest < test.tar" and read the messages.
See below.....
> "NOTE:Due to a KDE3 limitation, it can only backup files each up to 4GB
> in size (on 32bit platforms at least; therefore larger files are
> skipped)"
Note that tar in former times was a simple archive format (but this was in
1978).
Today, the tar archive format has become complex in order to be able to support
any extension and in order not to have limitations.
If you e.g. like to have support for files > 8 GB and don't like file name
length limitations, you need to use the POSIX.1-2001 version of the tar
standard.
Star is able to do this since the POSIX standard has been defined "stable" for
the tar part (in Summer 2001) and star is able to archive virtually any file
meta data (property) of any file. This is what you usually want for backups and
this is what you don't get from GNU tar and kbackup.
> Ah! One more thing. AFAIK Kbackup has nothing to do with GNU Tar. It
> utilizes KDE's KTar class, so I wouldn't seek the problem in GNU Tar
> (/bin/tar). Actually you can easyly make e test:
An important reason not to use kbackup.
Some examples:
/*--------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
gtar -cf - /etc/passwd | tartest
gtar: Removing leading `/' from member names
0.014r 0.000u 0.000s 0% 0M 0+0k 0st 0+0io 0pf+0w
tartest 1.10 (i386-pc-solaris2.11)
Copyright (C) 2002 Jörg Schilling
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Testing for POSIX.1-1990 TAR compliance...
Warning: illegal character ' ' (0x20) found in field 't_magic[5]'
Warning: illegal character ' ' (0x20) found in field 't_version[0]'
Warning: illegal character '^@' (0x00) found in field 't_version[1]'
Warning: non octal character '^@' (0x00) found in field 't_devmajor[0]'
Warning: non octal character '^@' (0x00) found in field 't_devmajor[1]'
Warning: non octal character '^@' (0x00) found in field 't_devmajor[2]'
Warning: non octal character '^@' (0x00) found in field 't_devmajor[3]'
Warning: non octal character '^@' (0x00) found in field 't_devmajor[4]'
Warning: non octal character '^@' (0x00) found in field 't_devmajor[5]'
Warning: non octal character '^@' (0x00) found in field 't_devmajor[6]'
Warning: non octal character '^@' (0x00) found in field 't_devmajor[7]'
Warning: non octal character '^@' (0x00) found in field 't_devminor[0]'
Warning: non octal character '^@' (0x00) found in field 't_devminor[1]'
Warning: non octal character '^@' (0x00) found in field 't_devminor[2]'
Warning: non octal character '^@' (0x00) found in field 't_devminor[3]'
Warning: non octal character '^@' (0x00) found in field 't_devminor[4]'
Warning: non octal character '^@' (0x00) found in field 't_devminor[5]'
Warning: non octal character '^@' (0x00) found in field 't_devminor[6]'
Warning: non octal character '^@' (0x00) found in field 't_devminor[7]'
*** Failing Filename 'etc/passwd'
Found 1st EOF block at 3
Found 2nd EOF block at 4
>>> Archive is not POSIX.1-1990 TAR standard compliant.
gtar --format=ustar -cf - /etc/passwd | tartest
gtar: Removing leading `/' from member names
0.004r 0.000u 0.000s 0% 0M 0+0k 0st 0+0io 0pf+0w
tartest 1.10 (i386-pc-solaris2.11)
Copyright (C) 2002 Jörg Schilling
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Testing for POSIX.1-1990 TAR compliance...
Found 1st EOF block at 3
Found 2nd EOF block at 4
No deviations from POSIX.1-1990 TAR standard found.
NOTE:
The last one is a result of 15 years of nitpicking the GNU tar maintainers!
star delivers POSIX compliance for a long time....
Jörg
--
EMail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (uni)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
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