system backup

[cbbrowne-HInyCGIudOg at public.gmane.org]

> On Mon, Aug 16, 2004 at 10:35:17PM -0400, Peter L. Peres wrote:
> > Normally you want to do something like that using cpio, and not tar. You 
> > can prepare a filelist using find / -prune /dev -a etc etc to remove 
> > unpalatable things from the archive.
> 
> Not if it's a tar file you are trying to create.
> 
> I use afio for backups, but I never have understood the point of cpio.
> What does it do that rsync doesn't do for me?

The point of cpio isn't as an alternative to rsync, but as an
alternative to tar.

The fact that it doesn't bother trying to manage the filtering of file
names, but leaves that to your other filters, means that it has somewhat
more of the "Unix nature" than tar, which tends to include the kitchen
sink and more.

After all, tar has been augmented to include:
 - Considerably sophisticated "file selection";
 - Compression (often both gzip and bzip2)

cpio simply leaves that to other tools.
--
(format nil "~S@~S" "cbbrowne" "cbbrowne.com")
http://cbbrowne.com/info/backup.html
First Rule of Computer Security
- Only forbid that which can be made impossible.
- Facilitate the possible.
- Have the wisdom to explain the difference.
-- Mark Miller
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml