[Novalug] tar question

Mike Shade mshade@mshade.org
Sat Aug 22 09:48:02 EDT 2009


On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 9:45 AM, Ed James<edjames@greenbelt.com> wrote:
> Varol,
>
>   If you back your files up to multiple tapes (for example),
> the -M option tells tar not to report an "end of media" error
> when you write to one of a series of tapes, or an "end of
> archive" when you read from one of the tapes.
>
>   If you extract a file which starts on one tape and ends
> on the next tape, -M will tell tar to flash you a message to
> load the next tape, rather than borking.
>
>   There are no parameters to go with the -M option, afaik.
>
>   Least, I believe this is true - it's been years and stuff.

There are some other options that can go along with it -- you can
'spoof' a tape length with the --tape-length variable to create
volumes of a desired size.
Here's a good little writeup:

http://paulbradley.tv/44/

-- Mike



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