On Wed, 06 Dec 2006 10:11:34 +0100, Otto Moerbeek wrote: > tar is not a "frontend" to pax. Thesey share the same code, and are in > fact the same executable. The pax format is different from the ustar > format. > > The ustar format is defined by POSIX and does not allow for filename > larger than 100 chars or path names larger than 255 chars. > > GNU choose to provide an extension, at the cost of reduced interoperability.
Thanks, Otto, for a clear technical explanation. (All my statements were taken from the archive; mistakenly it seems.) > I use dump and restore for backup, they were made for that and have the > nice feature of being able to do incremental backups. I am a big fan of dump/restore. Sometimes, it simply does not feel 'the right tool'. And sometimes there are archives coming from gtar. And I can't tell my hundreds of users how crappy MS Office is (actually, I do ! But it doesn't help very much). Any chance to add '-g' as "create / read an archive in gtar format. Discouraged, though ?" Uwe
