Partitions, GNU tar, and dump

[Al Petrofsky]

In article <10163 at brazos.Rice.edu> glenn at csri.toronto.edu (Glenn Mackintosh) writes:
   However, tar does have the problem that it fills in holes in files. This
   means that databses that fit on your disk but contain chunks that don't
   actually have blocks assigned to them suddenly get much bigger, perhaps
   even too big for your disk if the holes are very big, if you try and
   recover it from a tar'ed tape.

The June 1990 GNUS Bulletin says GNU tar includes "the ability to archive
sparse files."  I haven't tried it, but it sounds like they've got all the
bases covered.

Al Petrofsky
alpetrof at ocf.berkeley.edu