Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!math.fu-berlin.de!ira.uka.de!unido!tools!fl From: fl@tools.uucp (Frank Lancaster) Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn Subject: Re: TAR & Disk Corruption. Message-ID: Date: 19 Jun 91 07:30:40 GMT References: Sender: news@tools.UUCP Distribution: comp Organization: TooLs GmbH, Bonn, Germany Lines: 24 In-reply-to: kelvin@thed's message of 18 Jun 91 09:05:45 GMT tar will remind you if called with no parameters to READ THE DOCUMENTATION FILE and THAT I WILL TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY DATA LOSS DUE TO THE USE OF THIS PROGRAMME. I must say that I myself use tar on regular basis and I do not have any problems anymore. The bug that could delete some or all of your hard disc was removed ages ago. If you read the history section in the documentation you would have realised this. I released the tar programme into the public domain because I thought it a very useful utility. But as people who have some kind of trouble using it or with their hard disc always seem to see the fault in the programme I will now stop supporting it. I am fed up! Some people would probably write to AT&T and say that UNIX has a bug because if you rm -rf * it deletes all your files without saying anything. It was a bad idea that tar was released with submit/extract without the documentation, but I was preparing a release for comp.binaries.acorn with some changes suggested by several users. This will now not be done. You can buy a commercial backup programme and sue the company if it doesn't work, I have a heavy work load (some people do have to work for a living) and do not have the time to support a PD programme which is supposed to satifies everyone's idea of ease of use and safety. Frank Lancaster