Re: tar block question

[Bob McGowan]

Mike McCarty wrote:

David Fox wrote:

On Sun, Sep 14, 2008 at 1:16 PM, Mag Gam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

So, what do you recommend for such an annoyance? rsync takes a while
for me. But I rather I have 1 large tar file and untar as needed.

tar isn't the best tool to use for the job, especially if you need 1
file out of the tarball because it has to sequentially go through the
tar file until it hits the end. Your desired file might be at the

Or you hit ^C :-)

beginning, but it could be towards the end of the tarball. In any

TAR was originally intended to work with tape drives, some of which
are incapable of backward indexing, and must be rewound, so that's
the way it behaves.

event, having to stat / open (other file i/o) on 30K files is your
bottleneck, and in cases like this, rsync would fare better, since it
doesn't have to copy all the files, only ones that have changed. Of
course, the first run will take more time.

What tool do you recommend for his application? IOW...

He wants a single largeish file/archive which is quickly searchable.

Is cpio a better tool for this use?

Mike

The mount command would be:

  mount -t iso9660 -o loop /path/to/image/file.iso /mnt

Then, use files or rsync files between the /mnt the the "real" work area.

--
Bob McGowan

No, cpio does the same thing, sequential access. It, to, was developed in the tape backup days, IIRC. In any case, if random access is needed to files in the archive, I'm not sure which, if any, backup program would do this. Perhaps backup/restor? But perhaps an iso or other disk image format would work better? The file would be mounted using to loop device, updated with rsync, and randomly accessed as needed.

smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature