severity 448598 grave thanks Justification: data loss
> sudo tar --ignore-failed-read -C /media/data_big -cv -f - . | > sudo tar -C /mnt -x -f - > > Unfortunately, after the reading tar encountered about three > unreadable files, the two processes got desynchronized somehow, and > stracing the receiver tar revealed that it did nothing but read lots > of data from standard input. As a result, nothing got to the > destination disk after the read errors were encountered. This must be what bit me as well. I backed up my old laptop and decommissioned it, only to find to my surprise only weeks later that only half of /home and nothing after that had been copied. Good thing I noticed before the hard drive died completely; the partition table had already gone AWOL but I was able to reconstruct it and start copying stuff in smaller batches. The --ignore-failed-read option is by no means necessary. What I had was "file changed size", for whatever reason (I'll see if I can repro; actual file size different from what the directory says it should be?). /* era */ -- If this were a real .signature, it would suck less. Well, maybe not. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
