Re: Why do Informix Products ship with TAR and not CPIO?

In article <5lpfrs$9d9@cssun.mathcs.emory.edu>, Greg McGregor <lbduck@kew.starway.net.au> writes > >Hi All, > >My question came about when I recently installed Informix products (4.16 = >RDS/ONLINE 5.07/I-STAR) for a client using the standard TAR to extract = >the Informix software (as instructed). Their system is HP-UX 10.20 = >running the above products. The final step after installing the = >Informix products was to load our software which was compiled on a HP-UX = >10.10 running Informix-4gl 4.16 Development products. We use CPIO to cut = >tapes and extract again at the client site. =20 > >This time around I experienced problems when attempting CPIO at the = >client site. The CPIO returned a message like: > > " End of Volume" > "Enter next device name .... to continue." > >Even though I have previously read the contents fine back at the office = >prior to leaving to install. > >My theory is different compression modes between the two different HP-UX = >operating systems. To get the client the new versions of our system I = >am resorting to TARing the files. Now for my question. Why does = >Informix TAR instead of CPIO? Are there any benefits from one to the = >other? > tar is simpler - tar cvf to create and tar xvf to extract. cpio is not as portable... you have to use the following options -B <blocksize> -c ANSI headers to be portable...why bother? Also since cpio depends upon the blocksize of the device and tar does not it means you do not have to try and find the block size for the device. having said that I just installed SE 7.1 on a SCo box and Informix had used cpio to create the tapes...The were so many options used to cpio that I forget them all :-> >Any comments welcome! =20 > >Cheers, Greg. =20 > > -- David Williams