saving directories when they don't fit on 1 tape

[Conor P. Cahill]

In article <895 at kcdev.UUCP>, gentry at kcdev.UUCP (Art Gentry) writes:
> In article <1454 at mdbs.UUCP>, wsmith at mdbs.UUCP (Bill Smith) writes:
> > Is there an automatic, reasonably portable way to save a directory and all 
> > files beneath it on tape when it does not fit on a single piece of media 
> > and can not easily be split at the next level down in the directory tree?
> 
> At least on my Hewlett Packard and AT&T systems, both tar and cpio will do
> multi tape saves.  They will write untill eot is detected and then prompt
> for another device to continue writting.  If you just hit [return], they
> will continue writing to the same device (after you have changed the tape,
> of course!! :-})

Cpio does not allow this.  You must enter the name of the output device for
each follow on tape. This is the most agravating feature of any unix utility
that I use.   Invariably I will absent mindedly hit just a return on the 12th
diskette and have to remake the entire set.

I would prefer the mechanism that you specify or at least a mechanism that
requires a confirmation that you wish to abort the archiving.



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