[Techtalk] backup - tar

[Telsa Gwynne]

On Mon, Aug 30, 2004 at 11:02:09PM +0200 or thereabouts, Almut Behrens wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 30, 2004 at 12:04:20PM -0700, Maria McKinley wrote:
> > 
> > I am using tar to backup, and I am really frustrated with it.  It keeps 
> > going through a dozen or so files, and then quitting with no 
> > explanation.  It does this no matter which files I try to backup.  The 
> > command I use is:
> > 
> > nohup tar -czvf /dev/nst0 --atime-preserve /home > /tmp/backup &
[...]
> 
> Or else, if you want to stick with tar, my personal recommendation:
> do NOT compress the data.  I've too often had problems retrieving data
> from tapes.  Sometimes, it was only a tiny bit of junk data somewhere
> in the stream, but when your data is zipped, anything after that
> point will be lost...  (You can use -L/--tape-length to change tapes,
> if you need more than one).

I used to back up to tape. I used -M (--multi-volume) on GNU tar.
That meant I didn't need to use -z (--gzip) or -j (--bzip2). 

Telsa