> On Wed, 2002-08-14 at 14:33, Mike Staver wrote:
> > Oh, one quick last question - say my tape has no filesystem currently on
> > it and is completely blank... how would I format it?

> Theres no need to format a tape--programs like tar and cpio write the
> file metadata onto the tape along with the actual file data.

I second that - there is an actual tar "format" just as there's a cpio
"format" - but in the case of tar/cpio they write the format along with
the data onto whatever medium you specify.

You must have been used to Microsoft Windows or DOS tape programs that
require the tape to be formatted before use, or "erased" if it was for-
matted with a different program or something.

tar reads and writes to block devices, and when it starts writing to
a block device it starts writing at the first block and keeps going
until the input stream runs out or until the end of the block device
is reached.  There is no need to "format" the tape beforehand.

Ed is right about the various tar options - they are very handy.  And,
you may want to see about excluding the /proc directory on your root
filesystem from the backup, since there is no need to back up the files
and directories in /proc, especially /proc/kcore.

In fact you could delete /proc/kcore and that would save a lot of time.

KIDDING!!  That was an old Linux FAQ way-back-when.  I wonder if it's
still in the FAQs...

--
Jim Ockers (ockers@ockers.net)
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