linuxgeek: [LINUX_Newbies] Re: Need help with "mv" command

On 06Aug2011 05:00, Paul <pfrederick1@yahoo.com> wrote:
| --- In LINUX_Newbies@yahoogroups.com, Arturo Ovalle <dr_ovalle@...> wrote:
| tar doesn't compress it concatenates preserving attributes. Well it
| does a few other goofy tricks too but not unless you actually have a
| tape drive.

While grovelling in some dirt this afternoon I was thinking it is a real
deficiency of CDROM/DVDROM burner drivers that you can't treat them like
tapes. Tar naturally handles filling a tape, being a tape archiver, and
it could naturally handle filling a DVD too if the things had a good
behaviour.

You _should_ be able to go:

tar cvf /dev/my-dvd-drive stuff-to-archive...

and have tar prompt for each new DVD in turn. You'd be burning a "raw"
tar data stream to the DVD instead of an ISO9660 filesystem image, but
for purposes of the OP it would work nicely, generating a sequence of
DVDs you could label and put on the shelf, ready to extract with tar
later.

Cheers,
--
Cameron Simpson <cs@zip.com.au> DoD#743
http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/

Misfeasance, malfeasance, nonfeasance, and mopery with intent to gawk.
- Mike Royko