Hello all, today I've been sitting at work and upgrading a very-very-very old server with RedHat Linux 6.2 installed up to CentOS 3.8. The process went smoothly, as it is not the first time I was doing the things like this. Just after upgrading I went to rpm -qai list and got an interesting observation: there are at least two "tar" utilities installed on the system. One is tar, and second is star. [root at devel mrtg]# rpm -qi star Name : star Relocations: (not relocatable) Version : 1.5a08 Vendor: CentOS Release : 4 Build Date: Вск 29 Фев 2004 04:54:14 Install Date: Пнд 13 Ноя 2006 09:38:38 Build Host: centos3.wellhouse Group : Applications/Archiving Source RPM: star-1.5a08-4.src.rpm Size : 336744 License: GPL Signature : DSA/SHA1, Втр 16 Мар 2004 01:48:38, Key ID 7049e44d025e513b URL : http://www.fokus.gmd.de/research/cc/glone/employees/joerg.schilling/private/star.html Summary : An archiving tool with ACL support Description : Star saves many files together into a single tape or disk archive, and can restore individual files from the archive. Star supports ACL. [root at devel mrtg]# rpm -qi tar Name : tar Relocations: (not relocatable) Version : 1.14 Vendor: CentOS Release : 4 Build Date: Пнд 21 Фев 2005 18:58:37 Install Date: Срд 05 Апр 2006 19:48:51 Build Host: bhrama.build.karan.org Group : Applications/Archiving Source RPM: tar-1.14-4.src.rpm Size : 824393 License: GPL Signature : DSA/SHA1, Вск 27 Фев 2005 00:39:26, Key ID a53d0bab443e1821 Packager : Karanbir Singh <kbsingh at centos.org> URL : http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/ Summary : A GNU file archiving program. Description : The GNU tar program saves many files together in one archive and can restore individual files (or all of the files) from that archive. Tar can also be used to add supplemental files to an archive and to update or list files in the archive. Tar includes multivolume support, automatic archive compression/decompression, the ability to perform remote archives, and the ability to perform incremental and full backups. If you want to use tar for remote backups, you also need to install the rmt package. I would like to know, what are the differences between them? Which one should I use in the future? Is star compatible with amanda backup suite (I use amanda as a main backup software solution for our production environment servers)? Also, there may be other tar-like/compatible utilities shipped with CentOS3/4 that I simply don't know about. It would be great, if somebody will provide me with info (or a link to a place) about such utilities, and with a comparison between them all. Thanks in advance. -- С уважением, Alexey mailto:aloukianov at lavtech.ru