1237e14895e1
tech



Hello Viktor - 

RJT>>> That doesn't mean that tar still can't be a useful tool,
RJT>>> though. 

CA>> It's a hammer created where a screwdriver was what was
CA>> required. 

VP> The only point of using tar is that it can generate an
VP> archive seqentially, without seeking as seking is _REALLY_
VP> SLOW on a tape device. Try RARing or ZIPing something
VP> directly to a tape device and you'll see :) 

My only hands-on experience with tape drives has been the
Colorado Jumbo (inexpensive) drive and I wasn't happy using it.
Besides being slow, it had an irritating whine to it and seemed
to love to retension the tape and do lots of rewinding and fast
forwarding even when there was no need to 'seek' for anything.
:-\ 

Possibly with a better (more expensive?) tape drive my
experiences would've been more enlightening. 

As it is now, I would avoid tape like the plague. 

VP> So it really was a hammer when a hammer is needed the
VP> problem is that nowadays some people try to use it as a
VP> screwdriver :) 

OK, I can accept that analogy as well. :-) 

VP> Also, someone mentioned tar being able to work wihout a
VP> filesystem, actually almost any program under linux that
VP> stores it's stuff into one file can wotk directly with
VP> devices (w/o a FS) try ZIPing something to /dev/fd and it
VP> will work fine. 

I'm not so sure what the "no filesystem" is meant to describe
but I do know that unformatted media whether it be tape,
floppies, or a hard drive will not accept a write operation
under any OS I can think of. Burning files to a CD is a
possible exception as the 'format' and the file are moved
simultaneously to the media in one operation unless it's a CDRW
CD and in that case it must be formatted prior to any write
operations. 

MSDOS (and others) can also redirect output to a file using
stdout and read the file back using stdin once the media has
been formatted. 

>
>        ,                          ,
>      o/      Charles.Angelich      \o       ,
>       __o/
>     / >          USA, MI           < \   __\__
 

--- * ATP/16bit 2.31 * 
... DOS the Ghost in the Machine! http://www.undercoverdesign.com/dosghost/