tar or cpio?

[0732]

In article <246 at mancol.UUCP> samperi at mancol.UUCP (Dominick Samperi) writes:
>
>I'd be interested to hear about any published standards for tar and/or
>cpio (AT&T, POSIX, etc.), especially standards that define how to deal
>with multi-volume archives (e.g., how do you start reading starting at
>volume N?). Perhaps people can add to the list of advantages/disadvantages

I too would like to know if such information is available.  I once did
a cpio backup onto multiple floppies (AT&T 3B1), and when I tried to
restore,  I had a hard read error on one of the floppies, early on in
the sequence.  Luckily, I had the information elsewhere.  Would there
have been any way to bypass the bad floppy and continue the restore?
Where can one get a document describing cpio format?


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