On Wednesday 20 September 2006 10:46, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
>On Wed, 20 Sep 2006, Gene Heskett wrote:
>> On Wednesday 20 September 2006 05:56, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
>> >On Mon, 11 Sep 2006, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
>> >> On Sat, 9 Sep 2006, Josef Wolf wrote:
>> >> But be careful, at least the tar 1.15.91-2 from Debian is broken: it
>> >> ignores the --one-file-system option when doing incrementals,
>> >> causing exorbitant backup sizes for any level > 0. I don't know
>> >> about the upstream version, but since this bug has been reported
>> >> almost 2 months ago, I'm afraid that one is broken, too.
>> >
>> >Apparently the problem is more subtle. Thanks to the Debian bug
>> > tracking system, I noticed this:
>> >
>> >http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=384508
>> >tar: -l option changed meaning, without any warning!
>>
>> Tar is supposed to be a stable, mature utility is it not?  I mean its
>> what, 30 years old, existing in the various *nix's long before gnu took
>> over? Whyinhell can't the folks over at gnu.org find something else to
>> screw with besides tar?  It doesn't _need_ to be on their WPA or CCC
>> lists as a makework project when there's nothing else to do around the
>> office.
>>
>> According to
>> <http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_node/Option-Summary.html>
>> the --one-file-system option still exists, but must be spelled out as
>> shown here.  The -l option now checks hard links.
>>
>> So amanda CAN be fixed, but is tars option buffer big enough to do the
>> job when we have to spell every option out in order to protect us from
>> such future actions?
>>
>> I feel rather strongly about this, so gnu AT gnu DOT org has been added to 
>> the
>> Cc: list.  They need to know how the users feel about such
>> shennanigans.
>>
>> I wasn't able to find the docs for 1.15-1 on their site, so I have no
>> idea if this might explain the rash of small estimates I'm getting that
>> occasionally overrun my nominally 8GB vtape size by as much as 1.5GB!
>>
>> Question for the gnu folks: can you please tell us when this "-l"
>> option was actually changed to be the hardlink checking function from
>> the formerly used shorthand for the --one-file-system option?
>
>tar-1.15.91/NEWS states:
>| version 1.15.91 - Sergey Poznyakoff, (CVS version)
>|
>| * Incompatible changes
>|
>| ** Short option -l is now an alias of --check-links option, which
>| complies with UNIX98.  This ends the transition period started with
>| version 1.14.

ArrgGahhCCK!  So this might well explain why I'm under estimating the 
backups so grossly here of late.  If it screws up again, I'll --force the 
older 1.13-25 back in for a few runs.

>Gr{oetje,eeting}s,
>
>      Geert
>
>--
>Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 --
> geert AT linux-m68k DOT org
>
>In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker.
> But when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something
> like that. -- Linus Torvalds

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above
message by Gene Heskett are:
Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.