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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!haven.umd.edu!umd5.umd.edu!roissy.umd.edu!mark From: mark@roissy.umd.edu (Mark Sienkiewicz) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development Subject: Re: any chance of... Date: 30 Mar 1993 23:35:01 GMT Organization: University of Maryland Lines: 31 Message-ID: <1palf5$jek@umd5.umd.edu> References: <JKH.93Mar30023319@whisker.lotus.ie> <1993Mar30.041706.28158@coe.montana.edu> <JKH.93Mar30220435@whisker.lotus.ie> NNTP-Posting-Host: roissy.umd.edu Jordan says: >I thought the primary rational for using cpio was that it was smart enough >to prompt for media change! The few times I tried this with GNU tar >(admittedly last with 1.8), it didn't work. gnutar only prompts for media change if you say -M, for example: gnutar -x -v -f /dev/fd1h -M however, gnutar is _not_ a good candidate for an install disk because it is relatively big. A good candidate would be called "untar" and it would _only_ extract an entire archive. I wrote one of these in 30 minutes once. I didn't keep it because it was so trivial and I didn't need it. >Anyone care to comment on whether multiple-floppy distributions are made >easier/harder with cpio over tar? I've had these prompts from various tar programs: gnutar: Prepare volume #%d and hit return: pax: Type "go" when ready to proceed (or "quit" to abort): cpio: If you want to go on, type device/file name when ready I find it unpleasant to have to enter the device name again, therefore I dislike cpio. Also, with gnutar, I frequently use remote tapes which apparently cpio can't do. (e.g. gnutar -x -v -f elea:/dev/floppy -M)