Edit File: AN-1.2
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin,comp.unix.misc,alt.os.linux,alt.sys.sun,bln.comp.sun,bln.comp.unix,comp.os.linux.development.apps,comp.os.linux.misc,comp.sys.hp.apps,comp.sys.hp.misc,comp.sys.sgi.admin,comp.sys.sgi.apps,comp.sys.sgi.misc,comp.sys.sun.admin,comp.sys.sun.apps,comp.sys.sun.misc,comp.unix.aix,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.solaris,de.comp.os.linux.misc,de.comp.os.unix,linux.dev.admin,linux.dev.apps,maus.os.linux,maus.os.linux68k,maus.os.unix,uk.comp.os.linux Subject: Star-1.2 source has been released Star is the fastest tar archiver for UNIX Star has many improvements compared to other tar imlementations (including gnu tar). See below for a short description of the highlight of star. Star is located on: ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix/star This release is mostly a bugfix release and now gives a new stable base release in preparation of future changes. Changes since star-1.1: Fixed some problems with the -z option Fixed some oddities with the -listnew option Fixed a bug that caused a coredump with -nullout Added support for the different behavior of the chown() syscall in Linux that caused problems with extracting suid root files on Linux Allow the -C option to work with the listfile= option too New option -dodesc Added the code to use the _FIOAI ioctl on Solaris to speed up archiving sparse files > 200 times. You need a hacked ufs filesystem in order to use this on Solaris 2.6 ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix/kernel/ufs Revision history (short) 1982 First version on UNOS (extract only) 1985 Port to UNIX (fully funtional version) 1985 Added pre Posix method of handling special files/devices 1986 First experiments with fifo as external process. 1993 Remote tape access 1993 diff option 1994 Fifo with shared memory integrated into star 1994 Very long filenames and sparse files 1994 Gnutar and Ustar(Posix) handling added 1994 Xstar format (extended Posix) defined and introduced 1995 Ported to many platforms Supported platforms: SunOS 4.x, Solaris (SunOS 5.x), Linux, HP-UX, DG/UX, IRIX, AIX, FreeBSD, NetBSD Joerg ------------------------------------------------------------- Star is the fastest known implementation of a tar archiver. Star is able to make backups with more than 12MB/s if the disk and tape drive support such a speed. This is more than double the speed that ufsdump will get. Ampex got 13.5 MB/s with their new DLT tape drive. Ufsdump got a maximum speed of about 6MB/s with the same hardware. Star development started 1982, development is still in progress. The current version of star is stable and I never did my backups with other tools than star. Its main advantages over other tar implementations are: fifo - keeps the tape streaming. This gives you faster backups than you can achieve with ufsdump, if the size of the filesystem is > 1 GByte. pattern matcher - for a convenient user interface (see manual page for more details). To archive/extract a subset of files. sophisticated diff - user tailorable interface for comparing tar archives against file trees This is one of the most interesting parts of the star implementation. no namelen limitation - Pathnames up to 1024 Bytes may be archived. (The same limitation applies to linknames) This limit may be expanded in future without changing the method to record long names. deals with all 3 times - stores/restores all 3 times of a file (even creation time) may reset access time after doing backup does not clobber files - more recent copies on disk will not be clobbered from tape This may be the main advantage over other tar implementations. This allows automatically repairing of corruptions after a crash & fsck (Check for differences after doing this with the diff option). automatic byte swap - star automatically detects swapped archives and transparently reads them the right way automatic format detect - star automatically detects several common archive formats and adopts to them. Supported archive types are: Old tar, gnu tar, ansi tar, star. fully ansi compatible - Star is fully ANSI/Posix 1003.1 compatible. See README.otherbugs for a complete description of bugs found in other tar implementations. Have a look at the manual page, it is included in the distribution. Author: Joerg Schilling Seestr. 110 D-13353 Berlin Germany Email: joerg@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de, js@cs.tu-berlin.de schilling@fokus.gmd.de Please mail bugs and suggestions to me.