>> One of these commands.. >> >> # man tar >> # info tar >> # tar --help >> >>..will give you all information you need about your tar version.
>"all" information? Hardly. Neither "man tar" nor "tar --help" gave *me* >enough information to be able to answer his original question (though it >did point me to the -M option, which I suggested trying), and my system >(like many; it really has not caught on, despite pressure from the FSF >crowd) does not even have the "info" system installed. (Does BasicLinux >install it?) BasicLinux does not install the info system, but I'm certain it could be obtained from the Slackware 3.5 distribution. I carefully consulted the man and tar --help information, three of the SAMS thick manuals, Linux for Dummies, and even the Linux Companion for System Administrators (by Jochen Hein), but none of these offered enough examples or clearly working commands to accomplish what I was told by consulting the linux-newbie list. Also, I came here by the suggestion of Steven Darnold, who is the author of the BasicLinux distribution. As it stands, it's possible to backup to multiple floppy disks with tar, but these cannot be compressed during the archival process. (The tar program itself reports that it's not possible, if you attempt to use the compression options.) The BasicLinux system, even with the addition of several full programs to enhance it for my purposes, does not exceed 10 megabytes. So for this reason, I still found it personally adequate to attempt a multiple floppy disk tar archive without the benefit of compression. I still plan, however, to use a combination of tar and gzip for backing up selected documents onto floppy disks, along with other important configuration files on a more frequent schedule. A few more notes: I should have said that the badblocks (not the badblock) command is used for checking floppies (BasicLinux has this command), although when you fdformat floppies, it will tell you if there is a bad area on it. This is the style of backup I've chosen for this system. No one, though, should feel that this is the expected or "normal" method of backup for typical Linux systems. We would normally expect a Linux system on a network backup routine, or at least with a method of backing up to tape, another hard drive or zip drive. >So this was almost a textbook example of a good question for this list... >one that needs more than RTFM answers, but a response (which it >eventually elicited) from someone who could provide an example of how >to do it. Thank you, Ray. I'd consider that a reasonable summary of the matter. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
