On Tue, May 10, 2005 at 11:07:18AM -0700, Scott Mcdermott wrote:
> Brian Cuttler on Tue 10/05 11:18 -0400:
> > I'd understood that the OS native dump could handle
> > correctly certain types of files that tar couldn't. Not an
> > issue of binaries but rather other types of special files.
> > Is this or was this true ?
> 
> Well POSIX 1.e ACLs are one of them.
> 
> Why GNU tar doesn't support ACLs when star has supported
> them for ages, is quite a mystery (possibly, so they don't
> break the tar format).

dump/restore, in all its various flavors, is FS-type and/or
OS-type specific.  It thus can include features specific
to those FS/OS.  ACL features are not consistant in what
and how they are implemented; they too are FS/OS specific.
Thus, dump/restore can handle them.

Tar, OTOH, is intended to be FS/OS non-specific.  Thus it
handles a subset of all possible FS/OS features, namely
those common to all and present since the early days of unix.

-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                  jon AT jgcomp DOT com
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