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Re: Tar problem
Peter L. Peres wrote:
>
> On Sun, 1 Nov 1998, Ben Nes Michael wrote:
>
> > Hi
> >
> > I done tar -czv / > /xxx/xxx.gz.tar
> > It worked then it stoped by saying:
> >
> > tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors
> >
> > any one know what happend and what shell i do ?
>
> I don't believe that you did that ;) Did you do it as root ? Did the
> machine crash ? Got disk full ?
>
> You tried to compress all the device files, among other things, and the
> output file too into itself. At least one device file will fill anything
> forever (/dev/zero) many other will block or give a ENODEV, and the raw
WRONG !!!
'tar' is smart enough not to read from devices it compresses
i.e. there is noting wrong in doing 'tar cf z.tar /dev/zero'
try it and see ;-)
Regards
Erez
> device of the fs where the output file is mounted is guaranteed to fill
> itself with a large piece of itself ;). tar is not normally used to
> compress device files, use cpio instead.
>
> Is there a backup howto ? (sheepishly)
>
> Peter