tar or cpio, which is better?

[Richard Ducoty]

mpreen at hemel.bull.co.uk (Malcolm Preen) writes:

>sparks at power.viewlogic.com (Alan Sparks) writes:

>>In article <1990Nov12.095657.22489 at erbe.se> prc at erbe.se (Robert Claeson) writes:
>>>Using cpio instead worked just fine. Also, for backup purposes,
>>>cpio is probably the best. It comes *standard* with the ability to
>>>detect end-of-tape and create multi-volume archives. 

>On our system, Bull DPX/2-300 running a mix of system V and BSD the man page
>for cpio says :
>.........
>          -I file
>               Read the contents of file as input.  If file is a
>               ...

>          -O file
>               Direct the output of cpio to file.  If file is a
>               ...
=======================================

SVR4 also includes the I,O,.. switches for multi volume cpio.  You have
to be careful using these switches if the tapes, files, etc might be
used on System V 3.2 or earlier System V machines. 


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 - -   Richard Ducoty                                ..uunet!grumbly!duc
 _]    Capitola, California                            duc at grumbly.com