Unix without tar?

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <216 at bbxeng.UUCP> scott at bbxeng.UUCP (Scott-Engineering) writes:
>That's not entirely correct.  I've seen some 3b2 machines without tar.
>We still ship product for the 3b2 in cpio format because of this.

It's always possible for the vendor to remove "tar", or for the system
administrator to remove it or fail to install it, etc.  It's part of
the 3B2 master source distribution from AT&T, however.  (Or at least it
has been on the distributions we've received; there have been many UNIX
releases!)

You can pretty much count on "cpio" existing on 3B2s, and also on the
machines not being able to read 1/2" magtape!  You can pretty much
count on "cpio" NOT being available on commercial Berkeley-based systems,
although that's gradually changing.

When I ship my UNIX System V emulation for 4.nBSD, the first file on the
tape is normally an executable "cpio", so the rest of the tape can be
read.  Of course that requires some sort of UNIX licensing (which I have
to verify before shipment).