Piping TAR
Mark Clements
mpc at rac.com
Wed May 8 21:48:27 AEST 1991
In article <1991May7.001920.21111 at mrspoc.Transact.COM>
itkin at mrspoc.Transact.COM (Steven M. List) writes:
>>rembis at nic.cerf.net (Michael Rembis) writes:
>>
>>Hi. I need some help on a PC based XENIX system running version 2.3.
>>I am trying to relocate a tar file that is on the hard disk out to
>>a set of floppies. I have tried things like tar xf FILE | (tar cv2 -)
>>and other combinations of that command with no luck. Does anyone know
>>the right sequence to initiate this ?
> Unfortunately, you can't do it without first extracting the files from
> the archive and then creating the floppy archive. TAR writes to separate
> files when it extracts. There's no way to tell it to just copy the files
> with all their headers to floppies. :^(
>
> So, unless someone corrects me, I'm afraid that Michael is stuck with
> creating a temporary area, extracting the files from the tar file, and
> then creating the floppies and subsequently removing the files from the
> hard disk.
If the tar file in question is small enough to fit on one disk, you
can transfer it this way:
dd if=foo.tar of=/dev/fd096ds15
( substituting the correct tar file and floppy device, of course :)
Be sure to use the block device for the floppy, not the character
device.
If, however, the tar file is too large to fit on one disk, this won't
work ( dd doesn't "know" that you are writing to a disk, and so will
just barf when you run out of space on the floppy ).
Hope this helps.
--
Mark Clements Email: uunet!rac!mpc
RAC Information Systems, Inc mpc at rac.com
Great Neck, NY
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