Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!ucsd!sdcsvax!ucsdhub!jack!portnoy!ag
From: ag@portnoy.CTS.COM (Keith Gabryelski)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.xenix
Subject: Re: SCO Xenix stand alone/single user mode???
Message-ID: <107@portnoy.CTS.COM>
Date: 19 Mar 88 03:55:03 GMT
References: <1990@cadovax.UUCP> <152@turnkey.TCC.COM>
Reply-To: ag@portnoy.CTS.COM (Keith Gabryelski)
Organization: The Meadow Party, San Diego, CA
Lines: 25

In article <152@turnkey.TCC.COM> jack@turnkey.TCC.COM (Jack F. Vogel) writes:
>In article <1990@cadovax.UUCP> mitchell@cadovax.UUCP (Mitchell Lerner) writes:
>>which works better for getting specific stuff off (e.g. /u/osas/data/* or
>>/usr/bin/???), cpio or tar)? 
> 
>I find tar more convenient for access to specific items from a backup, its
>one weakness is that wildcards do not work on extraction. This is easy 
>enough to get around however. I would always suggest backups with multiple
>formats in any case.

I didn't get the message that Jack was repling to (head crash ate 3
days of news), but from the paragraph above I think some points should
be added.

tar will not archive FIFOs or devices.  cpio will.  If your intent is
to backup the entire system including special files then you would
probably want to use cpio.

tar, ofcourse, is more portable and thus, for moving files from one
machine to another would be your better (sometimes only) choice.

Pax, Keith

-- 
[  Keith   ]  UUCP: {cbosgd, hplabs!hp-sdd, sdcsvax, nosc}!crash!portnoy!ag
[Gabryelski]  INET: ag@portnoy.cts.com      ARPA: crash!portnoy!ag@nosc.mil