Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!kailand.kai.com!pwolfe
From: pwolfe@kailand.kai.com (Patrick Wolfe)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Another Backup Tool
Message-ID: <8905261221.AA03046@kailand.kai.com>
Date: 26 May 89 12:21:50 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 20

> /* Written by jmb@sgi.UUCP in kailand:kai.sgi */
> In case anyone is interested, I have ported 'pax', the portable super-duper
> understand everything, generate everything replacement for tar and cpio.  

What features does PAX support?

The features of GNU tar that I use (and need) are:
	- multi volume support (asks for new tape when EOV reached)
	- remote tape drive support (we have two tape drives for five systems)
	- option to read list of files to dump from a file or stdin
	- option to specify a file containing regular expression patterns to
	  ignore (ex:  "*.o", "/tmp/*")
	- option to stay in one file system (required for dumping "/" without
	  getting every NFS mounted file system)
	- option to create (non-standard) internal volume labels, so when I
	  forget to label a tape, I can mount it, do a "gtar -tv" and find out
	  what's on it.

I don't care whether I use dump, tar or cpio format, just as long as daily
and weekly incremental backups are as painless and quick as possible.