Re: tar and the braindead man
Ok, still having a problem. Let me do some more explaining. This was a TAR
file from another machine, I needed to make a copy of the tar file in order
to distribute the data. THe file was tar'ed with a user and group ID that
doesn't exsist on my system. So I am getting these errors:
# tar -cvf /dev/rmt/0m /usr/web/1801/tape/stddb981016.tar
tar: couldn't get uname for uid 100
tar: couldn't get gname for gid 204
a /usr/web/1801/tape/stddb981016.tar 440280 blocks
and it isn't writing anything to tape. Got any ideas?
Anthony
>*- Nikolai Andreyevich Luzan wrote about "Re: tar and the braindead man"
>| On Sun, 25 Oct 1998 servis@purdue.edu wrote:
>|
>| > You can't mount a tape. You need to write directly to the tape.
>| > Otherwise how could you do a full backup of your largest partition if
>| > it was over 50% full?
>| >
>| > Do this instead:
>| >
>| > tar -cvf /dev/st0 /usr/thedirectory
>| >
>| > where /dev/st0 is the device file for your tape. Assuming your tape is
>| > a scsi one(since it is a dat this is most likely true), you have scsi
>| > tape support for the kernel and it is your only or first one found by
>| > the kernel then the above device is correct.
>|
>| To the best of my knowledge the f option is not needed unless you
>| want to create, test or extract from a file. the actual command would
>| be
>| tar -cv /path/to/tar/up
>|
>| tar automagically looks for the first tape device and writes it's
>| archive there. if you doubt me then read the tar man page or the
>| appropriate HOWTO.
>|
>|
>| Nikolai
>|
>|
>
>I am doubting you.
>
>From tar's info page Node:Device
>
>========================================
> Starting with version 1.11.5, GNU `tar' uses standard input and
>standard output as the default device, and I will not try anymore
>supporting automatic device detection at installation time. This was
>failing really in too many cases, it was hopeless. This is now
>completely left to the installer to override standard input and standard
>output for default device, if this seems preferrable to him/her.
>Further, I think *most* actual usages of `tar' are done with pipes or
>disks, not really tapes, cartridges or diskettes.
>
> Some users think that using standard input and output is running
>after trouble. This could lead to a nasty surprise on your screen if
>you forget to specify an output file name--especially if you are going
>through a network or terminal server capable of buffering large amounts
>of output. We had so many bug reports in that area of configuring
>default tapes automatically, and so many contradicting requests, that
>we finally consider the problem to be portably intractable. We could
>of course use something like `/dev/tape' as a default, but this is
>*also* running after various kind of trouble, going from hung processes
>to accidental destruction of real tapes. After having seen all this
>mess, using standard input and output as a default really sounds like
>the only clean choice left, and a very useful one too.
>
>========================================
>
>And a simple test confirms this:
>
>{root@brian}{/tmp}[300]>touch test.txt
>{root@brian}{/tmp}[301]>echo hello >> test.txt
>{root@brian}{/tmp}[302]>tar cv test.txt
>test.txt
>test.txt100644 0 0 6 6614732352 10601 0ustar
rootroothello
>{root@brian}{/tmp}[303]>
>
>So you DO need the -f or --file option.
>
>Brian
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> because by that time you will be a mile away and have their shoes."
> - unknown
>
>Mechanical Engineering servis@purdue.edu
>Purdue University http://www.ecn.purdue.edu/~servis
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