making compressed backups

[Leo Pinard]

In article <1990Jan12.092215.1567 at aai.uu.net> I write:
>
>What is the best way to make compressed backups?  I have been trying
>things like:
>
>find /usr -depth -print  | cpio -oBmc | compress | dd of=/dev/rmt8
>
>but I've been having problems with segmentation faults and core dumps.
>Another problem with this method is that everything must fit on one
>tape.  Is there another or better way to do this?
>

I have done some experimenting and it is cpio that is dumping core.
This happens at the same place in my test files on both our Sun 3 and
Sun 4 running 4.0.3 when listing the files in the archive using

	cpio -itvc <archive	# archive is ~20MB in this test

After listing about 670 files containing about 6.7MB I get a segmentation
fault/core dump.

Am I doing something wrong here or is there a problem with Sun cpio
and/or OS?  Isn't this the kind of thing people need to do with cpio
all the time?

I received no suggestions from anyone about how multi-volume
compressed backups could be done.  Is it not possible without having
sufficient disk space to store the intermediate file?

Thanks!
Leo  leo at aai.uu.net  uunet!aai!leo