Standards Update, IEEE 1003.1: System services interface / TAPES

[Guy Harris]

From:  guy at auspex.uucp (Guy Harris)


>Then, a point often forgotten: There is a real need to select, duplicate,
>store data from some external medium (tape) on a different type of machine
>than the one the tape is written on / to be read.  The proposal above will
>make that an easy and safe operation,

Really?  The proposal above will deal with moving stuff from a machine
with a QIC-150-type 1/4" tape drive that can't write QIC-24 tapes to a
machine with a QIC-24-type 1/4" tape drive that can't read QIC-150 or
QIC-120 tapes?  Neat trick!

>what cannot be claimed today. (Today, ypou just have to have a guru
>around who knows alls kinds of different machines and how they mix).

"The proposal above" seems to be "put a 'tar' or 'cpio' archive as one
file within an ANSI-labelled tape."  I fail to see how that makes things
any better; if the problems are with variations between "cpio" and "tar"
formats on different machines, wrapping ANSI labels around the "tar" or
"cpio" data doesn't seem to make things any better.

If the *real* fix is in the "tar'" and "cpio'" formats you list, what do
the ANSI labels buy you other than multi-volume support?

>Finally: Yes, we do move archives across networks, but for most substantial
>transfers of data in and out of our machines there is no adequate replacement
>for sequential magnetic media.

By "data" do you mean "data as opposed to programs"?  If not, do any of
the folks who have retrieved, say, the X11 source via FTP or UUCP have
any comments on the above claim? I sucked the entire X11R3 distribution
to our site via UUCP; I would have done the same with the X11R4 format,
except that somebody already had it and offered to put it on 1/4" tapes
- fortunately, a 1/4" format we can read; they put it on a "tar" tape,
though, so ANSI tape labels contributed nothing.... 

I suspect the amount of software moved into our site via UUCP is at
least a significant fraction of the amount of software moved into our
site via magtapes.


Volume-Number: Volume 20, Number 128