Return to BSD News archive
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!dispatch.news.demon.net!demon!fido.news.demon.net!demon!newsgate.unisource.nl!news.unisource.nl!xs4all!plm.xs4all.nl!plm
From: Peter Mutsaers <plm@xs4all.nl>
Subject: Re: Tape file system
X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.4.25/Emacs 19.34
Sender: plm@plm.xs4all.nl
Organization: My Unorganized Home
Message-ID: <87zpvu2805.fsf@plm.xs4all.nl>
References: <5h0pfc$7vg@fu-berlin.de>
Date: Sun, 23 Mar 1997 10:54:50 GMT
Lines: 31
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:37649
>> On 22 Mar 1997 14:14:04 GMT, gusw@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Gunther Schadow) said:
GS> the tape, it doesn't work due to missing IOCTLs for the st0 driver.
GS> Newfs doesn't work then either. Will it be easy to emulate a disk
GS> with a tape drive? Or do we need a separate tape filesystem driver?
I know someone once made a (commercial) tape filesystem for Linux.
It will always be a quite different type of filesystem from a disk
based filesystem, because on disk you can seek without much penalty
but no tape you cannot.
GS> I am asking because I feel like the tar (`Tape ARchive') is not as
GS> well tailored as it could be, if it had an index at the head and would
GS> quickly proceed to the position of the desired files to be extracted.
GS> Dump(8) has a nice directory feature `restore -i'is very comfortable,
GS> however, restore does not seek quickly but reads over the whole tape.
GS> Finally would it not be a file system like thing in the end?
I agree, but a filesystem implementation just to get a nice index is
quite drastic.
For Linux there are tools like tob or taper that do more or less what
you want. Maybe these could be ported to FreeBSD. I might give tob a
try.
I didn't know that restore doesn't seek quickly by the way. Does
anyone know why it doesn't?
--
/\_/\
( o.o ) Peter Mutsaers | Abcoude (Utrecht), | Trust is a good quality
) ^ ( plm@xs4all.nl | the Netherlands | for other people to have