GNU tar and mtx

[Tom Dawson]

Does anyone have experience with GNU tar, and would they care to share their comments/observations?

In particular, I'm interested in the --multi-volume and --new-volume-script options. Does the --new-volume-script option work about the same as "chgvol" under fbackup?

Does GNU have the 100 Character filename/directory entry limitation? I saw a comment from somebody that it was increased to 256 characters, but I couldn't confirm that in the GNU tar man page.

I'm trying to put together backup/recovery mechanisms that will work the same on my HP-UX and Solaris servers. And I'm not convinced that Data Protector is worth the cost. I've used tar for years and trust its' reliability. But I've never used it where I've had to span multiple volumes. If only fbackup was available for Solaris!

Any comments, suggestions will be appreciated.

Thanks,
Tom

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

My understanding is gnu tar goes with the OS and that limit is 256

SEP

[Tom Dawson]

Steven,

Thank you.

Tom

[A. Clay Stephenson]

If this were me, I wouldn't trust any documentation or comments because backups are too important. I would test for support of my longest anticipated filenames (w and w/o embedded whitespace) and for the support of my largest anticipated files. Gtar is quite powerful and quite portable but I would test it but then again I don't trust nobody until I've tested something. You should also ask yourself if the ability to preserve sparse files is important.

If you aren't convinced that DP (or another cross-platform backup tool) is worth the price then ask yourself how valuable are your data. The ability to do point-and-click restores from thousands of miles away while not having to worry about which medium that backup is on isn't cheap but it is extremely handy at times.

[Tom Dawson]

Clay,

Thanks. Those are some of the very concerns I was worried about.

Tom