Tar(1) portability???

[Greg Earle]

Thanks to everyone who responded to my question about tar(1) portability.
For those interested, the consensus was :

(1) The old Cipher drive on the Perkin Elmer is probably brain damaged,
and can't read my tape(s) due to different gap size, etc.  In this case,
the only solution would be to write the 'tar' file onto the tape via dd,
and see if it can be "un-dd'ed" off of the Cipher.

(2) The tape controller on the AT&T 3b5 can't handle the default tar block
size of 20.  Some people suggested 5, but I think (from the blocksize:2
problem) that the safest way is bs=1.

(3) System V 'tar' doesn't like the directory header info that BSD tar puts
on it.  You must use the '-o' flag in BSD tar to suppress this.

My 'solution' (I had to get the file before I posted the question) was to
call up my system and use cu/tip to download it.  Thank goodness for modems...

Thanks again.

        Greg Earle
        JPL
        sdcrdcf!smeagol!earle   (UUCP)
        ia-sun2!smeagol!earle at cit-vax.arpa      (ARPA)

-------------------------
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