multi-volume archives

[Polytropon]

On Sat, 21 Sep 2019 13:35:22 -0400, Kurt Hackenberg wrote:
> On 2019-09-21 04:38, Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, 21 Sep 2019 13:30:03 +0700
> > Victor Sudakov <vas at mpeks.tomsk.su> wrote:
> 
> >> Which is now the most convenient way to create multi-volume archives? To
> >> fit an archive on a FAT32 flash drive, a volume size should not exceed
> >> 4g.
> > 
> > 	Gnu tar (in ports/packages as gtar) has support for multi-volume
> > splitting (-M) which by default prompts for the next volume to be installed
> > (so you could write direct to the flash drive) or can use a script to
> > generate the next volume filename. I vaguely recall using it a long time
> > ago.
> 
> You could also use dump, if you want to archive a whole filesystem. Dump 
> can write to multiple volumes, it handles everything in a Unix 
> filesystem, and it's fast. For multiple volumes, it would write directly 
> to the device, without filesystems.

That is a good suggestion as long as you can get the source
data partition-wise (usually equals one filesystem that can
be subject to dump / restore).



> If your memory sticks are larger than FAT can handle, you could put some 
> other filesystem on them, like UFS. I believe FAT32 limits a single file 
> to 2 GB. It's also slow.

Even better, you could omit the filesystem altogether and use tar
on the bare device (the "most universal cross-plattform filesystem"):
tar c /dev/da0 ... tar x /dev/da0. And as it has already been
suggested, GNU tar has the -M option for managing multiple volumes.



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...