Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!uokmax!d.cs.okstate.edu!klarich From: klarich@d.cs.okstate.edu (KLARICH TERRY JAME) Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin Subject: Re: tar or cpio, which is better? Message-ID: <1990Nov14.213344.23834@d.cs.okstate.edu> Date: 14 Nov 90 21:33:44 GMT References: <57@astph.UUCP> <529@comcon.UUCP> <1990Nov12.095657.22489@erbe.se> Organization: Oklahoma State University, Stillwater Lines: 28 In article <1990Nov12.095657.22489@erbe.se> prc@erbe.se (Robert Claeson) writes: >In a recent article tim@comcon.UUCP (Tim Brown) writes, on tar vs. cpio: > >>Tar seems more portable. I did some archives on a system running >>ISC2.2 and could not read them on an Risc 6000/AIX machine. I suspect >>that if I had remembered to use the -c option it would have worked >>but tar works fine as is. > >The man page for cpio says that the -c option always should be used >for creating archives that should be transferred to other machines. >I believe that POSIX's cpio defaults to the -c option. > >I've run into cases where a machine refused to read my tar files. >Using cpio instead worked just fine. Also, for backup purposes, >cpio is probably the best. It comes *standard* with the ability to >detect end-of-tape and create multi-volume archives. It has better >support for incremental backups and selective restores. And it supports >longer paths than tar's limit of 100 characters. I know that cpio will also archive the special and device fines usualy found in in /dev. How ever, I think I remember that cpio won't handle symbolic links properly. I really don't remember if this was for everyone's cpio or just one vender's. -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Terry Klarich n5hts