On Tue, Jun 20, 2000 at 05:59:15PM +0100, Fergal Daly wrote:
> Can anyone recommend and alternative to tar? Because as far as I can tell
> with tar, you have to read the whole tar file to get to the last file.
If the archive is on a tape, then you must read to the end to get the last
file due to the nature of tape. If it's an archive on a disk, then the seek
time is negligible.
> there a tarrer that builds some sort of table of contents, puts that at the
> start of the file and lets you jump in and extract files at random,
> preferably with compression too.
That's what dump (and its companion restore) does. You can't really extract
files at random - you get a browsing interface from which you select files
to restore, and then restore them all. But again, if the dump archive is on
a tape, you have to read to the end to get the last file. In principle you
can use dump to stdout and pipe it through a compression program, though
I've never done that, and I don't know how it would work when dumping
gigabytes of data.
> I'd imagine zip might do this, but it's not really designed to handle
> permissions etc.
Zip does handle permissions, and ownerships too with the right switch.
However, I think it can only ouput to files, not devices. What exactly are
you trying to do ?
Regards,
Niall
Maintained by the ILUG website team. The aim of Linux.ie is to
support and help commercial and private users of Linux in Ireland. You can
display ILUG news in your own webpages, read backend
information to find out how. Networking services kindly provided by HEAnet, server kindly donated by
Dell. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds,
used with permission. No penguins were harmed in the production or maintenance
of this highly praised website. Looking for the
Indian Linux Users' Group? Try here. If you've read all this and aren't a lawyer: you should be!
