From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Jan 27 23:49:24 2007 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D7C5916A537 for ; Sat, 27 Jan 2007 23:49:24 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kientzle@freebsd.org) Received: from kientzle.com (h-66-166-149-50.snvacaid.covad.net [66.166.149.50]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2B1C913C4C3 for ; Sat, 27 Jan 2007 23:49:20 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kientzle@freebsd.org) Received: from [10.0.0.222] (p54.kientzle.com [66.166.149.54]) by kientzle.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id l0RNA824004223; Sat, 27 Jan 2007 15:10:08 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from kientzle@freebsd.org) Message-ID: <45BBDBCF.3090901@freebsd.org> Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2007 15:10:07 -0800 From: Tim Kientzle User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20060422 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Brian Reichert References: <17850.11127.944124.276290@jerusalem.litteratus.org> <200701261733.l0QHXdY1078259@lurza.secnetix.de> <20070126224352.GD927@turion.vk2pj.dyndns.org> <20070127165437.GB41546@numachi.com> In-Reply-To: <20070127165437.GB41546@numachi.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Peter Jeremy , freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: dump/tar/star/etc (was Re: Interesting speed benchmarks) X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2007 23:49:25 -0000 Brian Reichert wrote: >On Sat, Jan 27, 2007 at 09:43:52AM +1100, Peter Jeremy wrote: > > >> ... dump/restore is the only tool ... tar, cpio and pax also have ... restrictions. >> >> > >I thought 'star' handled sparse files and all the extra magic? Not >that this is germaine to the topic at hand... > > The full picture is a little complicated. No one tool gets everything exactly right: For sparse file support: * dump fully handles them. * gnutar and star use some guesswork to archive them into "gnutar format" archives; neither can guarantee that the final block layout matches the original * gnutar, star, and bsdtar can all restore sparse files from "gnutar format" archives For ACLs and file flags: * I'm not sure about dump; I believe it handles file flags but not ACLs * star and bsdtar fully support both using "pax extended" tar archives * gtar, cpio, and pax do not support them For long filenames and large files: * dump should fully support both up to the limits of the filesystem * star, bsdtar, and gnutar all support large files (64-bit lengths) using extended tar archives * star and gnutar support filenames up to 1k (longest name supported by kernel system calls) * bsdtar supports filenames up to 1meg, though with some limits (restoring dirs with names over 1k gets the permissions wrong sometimes) * cpio and pax are more limited I eventually want to replace cpio and pax with versions built on top of libarchive (as bsdtar is), which will alleviate some of these issues. (Though some are particular to the archive formats; there is no standard cpio extension for long filenames or large files.) Tim Kientzle