Unix without tar?

[Mark J Elkins]

>From article <216 at bbxeng.UUCP>, by scott at bbxeng.UUCP (Engineering):
>  In article <10889 at smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn at brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn) writes:
>  >In article <JES.89Aug30102233 at mbio.med.upenn.edu> jes at mbio.med.upenn.edu (Joe Smith) writes:
>  >>Recently, someone asserted that tar archives aren't a suitable
>  >>distribution format because they aren't understood by every Unix.
>  >
>  >"tar" archives may not be suitable, but it's not because "tar" is
>  >unavailable.  Every AT&T UNIX release since 7th Edition (around 1978)
>  >has included some version of "tar"; it's "cpio" that may not exist
>  >everywhere (particularly 4.2BSD-based systems).
> 
> 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.
> (Note: 3b2 is an AT&T box).

Thats quite true!

Back in the days of 3b2 300/310/400, Tar is (was) only on a 3B2 if you 
had a Tape Streamer (the old 23 Mb one) - theory being - all software 
was supplied on "floppy's with files systems." CPIO was used to "pass" 
the info onto the AT+T.  You got "tar" as part of the "Cartridge Tape 
Utilities" floppy.  

Maybe part of the campaign to oust "tar" and bring in "cpio".  Who 
cares - I use "afio".  (Did anyone fix the cpio -ic Bug ???  
("Portable" ascii headers) - when restoring files with numeric file 
names (eg /usr/lib/terminfo) - You sometimes get "End of Media"...) 
-- 
/"""\  Mark J Elkins, Olivetti Africa, Unix Software Support
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