Forwarded message: request for help

[Gary S. Trujillo]

> In general, cpio is nicer than tar because you can use the full power
> of find to select the files to be backed up.

However, with gnu tar, which I believe comes standard with Linux, you
can read filenames of files to be written from a file.

> (There is also supposed
> to be some kind of special file which cpio can reconstruct but tar
> cannot.)

FIFOs and named pipes - but I believe that gnu tar knows how to deal
with them as well.

> If you want to use compression with tape, afio is better than either
> cpio or tar since it compresses each file, and if you have an I/O error
> you lose only one file...

This may be a good argument against tar, even of the gnu persuasion.

Gary