2 May
2002
2 May
'02
5:18 a.m.
Raymond Moyers <rmoyers(a)nop.org> wrote:
What's wrong with cat (and dd, and arguably the whole Un*x concept of
files-as-bytestreams for that matter) is that it loses information. A
magnetic tape is not an ordered stream of bytes, it is an ordered
stream of files of records, and each record has a length. So you are
forced to result to multiple disk files to maintain the file structure
(which adds to your hassle because now you need to manage collections
of files instead of a single tape), and as you are copying the files
to bytestreams you lose the record length information.
This may come across as a flame of Un*x, and maybe it is, but really
my point is that the Un*x model of files as bytestreams is not an
appropriate model for magnetic tapes.
-Frank McConnell
At 02:01 AM
5/2/2002 -0700, Ethan Dicks wrote:
I can use dd to slurp
stuff off of tape, but it's tedious. What tools are people using for
tape archiving under Linux or Solaris? AIX seems to come with "tcopy"
that essentially pulls everything off the tape until logical or physical
EOT. I'm looking for something similar - point it at the drive and
siphon it on down.
Whats wrong with cat ?