Re: Backup to a USB memory stick: Some questions.

pureheart@xxxxxxxxxxx staggered into the Black Sun and said:
I've half-decided to get an 8GB USB memory stick to use as backup. To
TAR files to the USB stick, do I need to format it ext2/3 or will
time/date/owner/etc. info be preserved if I leave it as VFAT?

tar stores metadata as fields within the tar file. So yes, mtime,
group, owner, and permissions will be stored. Remember that tar was
originally designed to operate on mag tapes, which don't even have a
filesystem on them (usually). Also, on FAT32, the largest file you can
write is typically 2G. You may need to pipe tar to split.

Should I just su to each user in turn (3 of 'em) and tar his ~
individually to the USB stick?

That'd work. I don't think it'd be *that* much more secure though.

Is there any speed advantage to skipping gzip/compress etc?

gzip is very fast. If you were bzip2'ing things, that'd take a lot
longer.

Or should I use another program entirely and skip TAR?

cpio and afio have their fans, but tar is still the archive format par
excellence on Unix-like systems.

--
I think I'll have to put on 500 pounds of subwoofers, amps, and other
delicious herbs. --MegaHAL, trained on ASR
=======Hire me! http://crow202.dyndns.org:8080/~mhgraham/resume/
Matt G|There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see
.

Relevant Pages