tar, pax, cpio for backing up

rharder

Do not read this sign.
So we're all waiting for backup software for OS X and the Retrospect client is useless if you don't have a Mac Retrospect server somewhere (and who does?).

I wonder why we can't use something like tar, gnutar, pax, or cpio for backing up non-resource-forked files. I'm unfamiliar with pax and cpio and I'm not convinced tar/gnutar is really going to work with their limits on file path lengths--unless that's an old limit that's been fixed.

Is anyone familiar with these tools, and does anyone know if they could be used to back up a hard drive to some other medium? Disk drive? Tape drive? Network drive?

I've had limited success with a command like this:
Code:
% <b>sudo gnutar cvpf /backup/usr.tar /usr</b>

-Rob
 
Well I've found the 'dump' command which seems to have the same funcionality and format of solaris's 'ufsdump' command.

The advantage over tar is that 'dump' support incremental backups.

As far as backing up resource forks etc.. have you tried 'dd' it's not a recomended backup tool, but it might work.

Check out the man pages.
 
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