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From: mcs@fps.com (Mike Sanfratello)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.xenix
Subject: Re: Xenix Multi-tape backup
Message-ID: <6200@celit.fps.com>
Date: 16 Jan 90 17:04:04 GMT
References: <569@runxtsa.runx.oz.au> <2603@thebes.Thalatta.COM> <13694@s.ms.uky.edu>
Sender: daemon@fps.com
Reply-To: mcs@fps.com (Mike Sanfratello)
Organization: FPS Computing
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In article <13694@s.ms.uky.edu> simon@ms.uky.edu (G. Simon Gales) writes:
>There _is_ at least one version of Xenix whose tar is broken.  You can make
>multi-volume tars, but when you try to reload (un-tar?) them, tar will prompt
>for the next volume only if a file was split across the volume and the next
>one.  If a file isn't split across volumes, tar will simply stop at the end
>of the volume.

This is not "broken", it is working exactly as it is supposed to.  If the last
file on the tape is not a huge file, it will not be split across volumes and
each volume will be a discrete tar tape.  This has advantages, such as if you
want a file a few tapes in, you can just go to that tape if you know which one
it is.  Otherwise, just run tar separately on each tape.