Use tar to append?

[Mikkel L. Ellertson]

Mike McCarty wrote:
> Cameron Simpson wrote:
>> Yeah. "tar czf" works by piping through a gzip, so it's faster than
>> "tar cf
> 
> That's not the cause, I'm sure. For example, adding /usr/src, which is
> 48 KB (i.e. I deleted it, and only the directory structure remains) took
> two minutes. I looked carefully at the behavior, and it appears that
> tar reads the entire archive to find the EOF.
> 
The problem is that the entire archive is compressed, and not the
individual files in it. So to add files, you have to uncompress the
archive, add the files to it, and re-compress it. If you have the
space, you would be better off creating an uncompressed archive of
all the files you want to back up, and then compress and split the
archive at the end.

You could use zip instead of tar, as it will compress individual
files. Chances are, you will also find it on your next OS...

Mikkel
-- 

  Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
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