Re: Star or gnu cpio, or Something Else?

From: Michael Laajanen (michael_laajanen_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 06/17/03 

Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2003 09:00:43 GMT

HI,

Larry Lindstrom wrote:
> Hi Experts:
>
> Sorry, I misspelled this newsgroup's name when
> trying to cross post from the X86 group.
>
> I discovered a month ago that cpio, which I've
> been using for years, no longer extracts files I've
> archived. It suddenly complains about the inode
> value being too large, and fails to recover.
I think I have read somwhere that cpio is more or less on it's way out.

>
> Fortunately, I also perform full system backups
> using ufsdump, and nothing major is lost. But my
> next account backup was with tar.
>
> I think it sucks severely that Solaris is being
> shipped with unreliable backup utilities. These
> facilities are too important. Anybody with me?
ofcourse, but what sucks?

>
> I used that tar tape to recover my account today,
> and got the following error shortly after starting:
>
> tar: directory checksum error
First, don't use SUN tar due to limitations in PATH depth, second stick
to one tar, like GNU tar then on all platforms.

>
> I used cpio on my Solaris PC to back up my account
> on an NFS mounted Linux system, without a tape of its
> own. This was when I still trusted cpio. Recovery
> with cpio, of course, failed. I really needed the
> contents of that tape, and found that I could recover
> that tape's files with gnu cpio.
>
> The most important question I have is, can I trust
> ufsdump? I use Andrew Gabriel's great utilities that
> rely on ufsdump and ufsrestore.
I like and have not had any problems with ufsdump, I do ufsdump from
disk to disk for daily backup, very nice although I would like to have
completion in ufsrestore :)

But you can not do verify on a live system, thats the problem so you
need to use fssnap first to frezze the filesystem onto a temp disk, then
ufsdump from that place.
>
> I want something portable between Solaris and Linux
> to recover my account. What do you folks use to backup
> your user accounts to tape?

gtar :)

/michael

Relevant Pages

  • difference
    ... #tar and #ufsdump ...
    (comp.unix.solaris)
  • SUMMARY: something is wrong with tar
    ... The solution that is recommended by most people is ufsdump. ... complete systems and does not handle 'special files' (device files, pipes, ... It was also suggested to use cpio ... or flarcreate and then tar the archive. ...
    (SunManagers)
  • Re: Star or gnu cpio, or Something Else?
    ... and fails to recover. ... > I think I have read somwhere that cpio is more or less on it's way out. ... >> next account backup was with tar. ... >> shipped with unreliable backup utilities. ...
    (comp.unix.solaris)
  • Re: Linux Backup Administration
    ... Gnutar and star provide extensions to the original tar (which did ... > relative pros and cons of cpio style vs. tar style backup? ... goal is to be able to restore an exactly identical system as fast ... The most likely reason to need the backup is that someone accidentally ...
    (Fedora)
  • [PATCH] update to the initramfs docs.
    ... +The kernel does not depend on external cpio tools, gen_init_cpio is created +from usr/gen_init_cpio.c which is entirely self-contained, and the kernel's +boot-time extractor is also self-contained. ... +Why cpio rather than tar? ... http://freshmeat.net/projects/afio/ + +2) The cpio archive format chosen by the kernel is simpler and cleaner (and ...
    (Linux-Kernel)