GNU-tar vs dump(1)

[Guy Harris]

>One thing that worries me about using tar for dumps is that it updates
>the access time of all the files that it reads.  Is there any way to
>avoid this?

Not without changing "tar" to do an "fstat" before it starts reading to
get the current accessed time, and an "fstat" to get the current
modified time and a "utime(s)" call to set the accessed time to its old
value (and set the modified time to its current value - you have to
change both) after it finishes reading.