Gregson Helledy on Fri, 28 Feb 2003 13:41:03 -0500


[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: [PLUG] Backup to CD-RW


According to a book I once read, cpio is better than GNU tar.
I've forgotten the book's reasoning, but I'm using cpio to make 
backups on my dialup gateway/printserver/fileserver.

Without starting a vi/emacs-style war, is there any real advantage
of one over the other for small (~500MB) backups?

Greg


=======================
gabriel rosenkoetter wrote:

Presuming you don't mean that you've written your own implementation
of tar(1), then you're using some GNU/Linux with its default tar;
that's (probably) GNU tar[1]. I don't know precisely to what the
author's referring by suggesting that "tar's not very good with
compression". Perhaps he just means that GNU tar's performance
sucks when using zlib (which is probably actually zlib's fault).

In general though, GNU tar's performance DOES suck. On a piece of
hardware I use frequently (an Exabyte EZ17 Mammoth2 tape loader[2]),
GNU tar averages 12-15 MB/s and Schily tar averages 25 MB/s or so.
What's more, GNU tar does certain things just flat-out wrong. See
ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/star/alpha/STARvsGNUTAR for more on that.

-- 
Privileged/Confidential information may be contained in this message.
If you are not the addressee indicated in this message (or responsible
for delivery of the message to such person), you may not copy or deliver
this message to anyone. In such case, you should destroy this message
and notify GRA, Inc. (gramail@gra-inc.com) immediately. Please advise
immediately if you or your employer do not consent to Internet e-mail
for messages of this kind. Opinions, conclusions and other information
expressed in this message are not given or endorsed by GRA, Inc. unless
otherwise indicated by an authorized representative independent of this
message.


_________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group        --       http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements - http://lists.netisland.net/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion  --   http://lists.netisland.net/mailman/listinfo/plug