how universal is tar format? SYSV?

[Bill Stewart]

>You are making the classic mistake, my original comments had more
>to do with randomly created tapes falling in your lap (ie. *I*
>didn't write them.) The whole point was mucho trouble with cpio tape
>in at least one case (argh!! don't respond with ways to write portable
>cpio tapes! this one was from AT&T, it was tooo late.) and very little
>trouble with tar tapes. If you have control you can write a portable
>EBCDIC tape with dd, as long as *you* read and *you* write it.
>	-Barry Shein, Boston University

We get lots of bizarre tapes; the EBCDIC ones are usually the easiest
to read - most of them are 80-column, 1680-blocksize (or non-blocked).
The tough ones are the 5-volume set, with a piece of duct tape
numbered 1,2,3,4,or 5 as the only labeling.  Of course it was
binary, but we did have a nearly-unreadable photocopy of the first
page of the printout, with some format info...   "What's a Blocksize?"

The critical part is getting the people to mark the tape reel with
the format (NOOOO, that's a NON-labelled TAPE, with a labelled REEL, not...)
---
				Bill Stewart, AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel NJ