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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!nntp.coast.net!zombie.ncsc.mil!news.mathworks.com!news2.mathworks.com!newscaster-1.mcast.net!informatik.uni-bremen.de!nordwest.pop.de!uniol!uni-erlangen.de!news.tu-chemnitz.de!irz401!uriah.heep!news From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Making a multi-volume backup to /dev/fd0 using tar Date: 26 May 1996 10:40:40 GMT Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden Lines: 33 Message-ID: <4o9cf8$1iq@uriah.heep.sax.de> References: <DrpIsx.y7@ecf.toronto.edu> <4nq2e0$a6n@sidhe.hsc.fr> <4nsma9$5t1@fang.cs.sunyit.edu> <ufohney4am.fsf@cumulus.sky.bln.sub.org> Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch) NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.heep.sax.de Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Newsreader: knews 0.9.6 X-Phone: +49-351-2012 669 X-PGP-Fingerprint: DC 47 E6 E4 FF A6 E9 8F 93 21 E0 7D F9 12 D6 4E martini@heaven7.snafu.de (Martin Ibert) wrote: > : I beleive doing this (tar -cvfM /dev/rfd0 *) will create a big > : tar file named "M". > > Probably. The hyphen is superfluous(sp?), "tar cvfM /deV/rfd0 ." > should work fine. Better keep the hyphen, and at least, reverse the f and M options, since /dev/rfd0 is an argument to the f option. > : tar -M -L 1440 -cvf /dev/fd0 * (or some compfortable combonation) > > Nah. That looks _ugly_! What's wrong with the calling syntax tar > always had? Because that's how it is supposed to. (See Posix, the section about option specification.) Options have to be preceded by a dash, and you should only collapse options without arguments. Option arguments should be separated from their option letter by a white space. So, it should read as tar -cvM -L 1440 -f /dev/rfd0 <files to backup> The fact that GNU tar supports historical (inconsistent) practice doesn't mean you should publically recommend it. -- cheers, J"org joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)