tar for "full" floppy backup?

Hello everyone --

Thank you for offering me various suggestions on how to possibly get tar to make a backup archive on multiple floppies. Sorry to say, none of the suggestions worked.

The only result was that tar would make an archive in whatever directory I happened to be in when creating the archive -- and it would ignore the /dev/fd0 device.

When I used the "M" option, nothing occurred. When I tried adding the "z" option, I was told that multiple compressed archives were not possible.

When I try to use the Slackware manual command (SAMS), it messes up the floppy -- which has to be reformatted and so on.

The question remains: How can I back up -- with tar or any other Slackware 3.5 program -- my 9 MBs of files from the BasicLinux console with multiple floppies? And in compressed format?

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Hi, Jerry:

What version of 'tar' do you have?
tar --version

Please show us your exact command line
and the exact error message(s).

I am guessing that your command line should be:

tar -cyvMf /dev/fd0 /directory_to_be_backed_up
...
tar -xyvMf /dev/fd0

?
'y'=bz2 compression, 'z'=gzip compression

What I want to know is if/how the /dev/fd0 media
should be formatted. :-| Should it have a file system?
? superformat /dev/fd0u1440 ?

HTH, Chuck

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Originally to: Jerry James Haumberger

JH> The question remains: How can I back up -- with tar or any other JH> Slackware 3.5 program -- my 9 MBs of files from the BasicLinux JH> console with multiple floppies? And in compressed format?

One of these commands..

 # man tar
 # info tar
 # tar --help

..will give you all information you need about your tar version.

... To quote or not to quote, that is the question.

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"all" information? Hardly. Neither "man tar" nor "tar --help" gave *me* enough information to be able to answer his original question (though it did point me to the -M option, which I suggested trying), and my system (like many; it really has not caught on, despite pressure from the FSF crowd) does not even have the "info" system installed. (Does BasicLinux install it?)

FSF does have a tar tutorial available online (http://www.gnu.org/manual/tar-1.12/html_chapter/tar_toc.html), but even it doesn not answer the original question very clearly.

So this was almost a textbook example of a good question for this list ... one that needs more than RTFM answers, but a response (which it eventually elicited) from someone who could provide an example of how to do it.

--
-------------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"--------
Ray Olszewski -- Han Solo
Palo Alto, California, USA [email protected]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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No, BasicLinux does not have info (although it does have some man pages). BasicLinux is designed for old PCs with small HD, so there aren't many bells & whistles. Of course, if anybody really wanted to run info, that package could be installed from Slackware 3.5.

Cheers,
Steven

______________________________
http://www.volny.cz/basiclinux

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Originally to: Ray Olszewski

RO> "all" information? Hardly.

Hmmmm...

RO> Neither "man tar" nor "tar --help" gave *me* enough information to be RO> able to answer his original question (though it did point me to the RO> -M option, which I suggested trying),

If his version of Tar hadn't have the -M option, that had not worked for him.

RO> and my system (like many; it really has not caught on, despite RO> pressure from the FSF crowd) does not even have the "info" system RO> installed.

As I wrote "One of.."

RO> (Does BasicLinux install it?)

Dunno that..

RO> one that needs more than RTFM answers,

It was not my intension to be a RTFM answer..

... A quote is a quote is a quote is a quote..

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It would be possible to create a compressed archive and then split it into floppy-sized chunks. Like this:
-------------------------------------------
tar -zcvf - /usr | split - -C 1440k floppy.
-------------------------------------------
This will give you floppy.aa, floppy.ab, floppy.ac, etc. You could write a script around that to copy the files (for i in floppy.*) to floppies (prompt, mount, copy, umount).

To reverse the process, use cat instead of split.

Cheers,
Steven

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