Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: GNU-tar vs dump(1)
Message-ID: <848@auspex.UUCP>
Date: 14 Jan 89 07:53:50 GMT
References: <17999@adm.BRL.MIL> <629@mks.UUCP> <11@estinc.UUCP> <10797@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US> <1966@netmbx.UUCP> <6099@polya.Stanford.EDU>
Reply-To: guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 9

>One thing that worries me about using tar for dumps is that it updates
>the access time of all the files that it reads.  Is there any way to
>avoid this?

Not without changing "tar" to do an "fstat" before it starts reading to
get the current accessed time, and an "fstat" to get the current
modified time and a "utime(s)" call to set the accessed time to its old
value (and set the modified time to its current value - you have to
change both) after it finishes reading.