[CentOS] schily tools

Tue Feb 7 15:50:52 UTC 2012
Dennis Clarke <dclarke at blastwave.org>

> Let me comment some questions in one single mail:
>
>> My basic requirement with what I'm doing is to use standard tools and
>> formats so that archives I write today can be readable in 10 years.
>
> Star becomes 30 in 4 months, any archive created since it's early
> beginning in summer 1982 can still be read back.

 I have been using it for about a decade or more and anything I dumped
has been a no brainer to retrieve, on any other OS or even architecture.

>> I don't think there is any such general consensus.  Are you reading
>> something that favors Solaris/*bsd over GNU based systems?
>
> Schily tools (and in special star) implement support for Linux specific
> extensions. This is what you do not get from gtar at all. So why do Linux
> distros prefer gtar even though there is no Linux support?

Is there any correlation between this and the warning message I see during a
bootstrap like so :

 Warning: *** /usr/src/linux/include contains broken include files ***
 Warning: *** /usr/src/linux/include is not used this reason ***
 Warning: This may result in the inability to use recent Linux kernel
 interfaces

 Warning: *** linux/ext2_fs.h is not usable at all ***
 Warning: *** This makes it impossible to support Linux file flags ***
 You may try to compile using 'make COPTX=-DTRY_EXT2_FS'

>> I doubt if they are as well maintained in linux distros as the GNU
>> tool set, particularly in terms of having recent fixes backported into
>> the versions carried in enterprise distros.
>
> gtar still did not fix bugs I reported in 1993 (e.g. the bug that
> causes gtar to complain with "skipping to next header" even on it's
> own archives). I am thus sure that star not not worse than gtar....

There seems to be something missing here.

The subject was "schily tools" which is a lot more than star :

root at rsync:/etc/default# ls /opt/schily/bin
bosh      cdrecord  isodebug  mdigest   pfsh         sfind
star      ustar     bsh       change    isodump      mkhybrid
pxupgrade    sformat  star_sym  ved   btcflash  compare   isoinfo
mkisofs   readcd       sgrow    suntar    ved-e
calc      copy      isovfy    mt        sccs         sh
tar       ved-w
calltree  count     jsh       od        scgcheck     smake
tartest
cdda2mp3  devdump   label     opatch    scgskeleton  smt
termcap
cdda2ogg  gnutar    lndir     p         scpio        spatch
translit
cdda2wav  hdump     match     pfbsh     sdd          spax
udiff

care to comment on any of these ?  Certainly bosh needs a few words.

 dc

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+-------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| Dennis Clarke           | Solaris and Linux and Open Source |
| dclarke at blastwave.org   | Respect for open standards.       |
+-------------------------+-----------------------------------+