Re: [rdiff-backup-users] Tar replacement - format proposal]

[Kevin Spicer]

On Mon, 2003-09-29 at 20:59, John Goerzen wrote:

> > Then tape drives have the ability to move between file marks
extremely
> > quickly.  Apparently they are physically very large and easy for the
> > tape drive to register even at very high speed.
> 
> True; however, it also complicates things because it's a misuse of
what the
> file mark is really for.  It's really for just that -- marking EOF and
> skipping to the desired file on a tape. 

I agree, thats a misuse and shouldn't be done.  I often have to skip
between sections on my Solaris archive tapes using the mt command to
skip EOF marks and I'd be damn annoyed (following the initial
confusion!) if I found that skipping my first two archives actually
landed me in the middle of my first archive, with no way of knowing
where my third archive actually starts.

The index will massively help here, so long as its entries can be
readily translated into tape blocks.






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