Unix without tar?

[jmm at eci386.UUCP]

In article <10904 at smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn at brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn) writes:
+In article <216 at bbxeng.UUCP> scott at bbxeng.UUCP (Scott-Engineering) writes:
+>That's not entirely correct.  I've seen some 3b2 machines without tar.
+>We still ship product for the 3b2 in cpio format because of this.
+
+It's always possible for the vendor to remove "tar", or for the system
+administrator to remove it or fail to install it, etc.  It's part of
+the 3B2 master source distribution from AT&T, however.  (Or at least it
+has been on the distributions we've received; there have been many UNIX
+releases!)
+ [...]

It is also possible (and I've seen in more than one circumstance) for the
vendor to put tar in /etc instead of in /bin or /usr/bin - i.e. in the path
for root (usually) but for no-one else.

Nobody except root would ever want to use tar of course...  :-)
-- 
"Software and cathedrals are much the same -          | John Macdonald
first we build them, then we pray" (Sam Redwine)      |   jmm at eci386