Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin,comp.unix.misc,alt.os.linux,alt.sys.sun,bln.comp.sun,bln.comp.unix,comp.os.linux.development.apps,comp.os.linux.misc,comp.sys.hp.apps,comp.sys.hp.misc,comp.sys.sgi.admin,comp.sys.sgi.apps,comp.sys.sgi.misc,comp.sys.sun.admin,comp.sys.sun.apps,comp.sys.sun.misc,comp.unix.aix,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.solaris,de.comp.os.linux.misc,de.comp.os.unix,linux.dev.admin,linux.dev.apps,maus.os.linux,maus.os.linux68k,maus.os.unix,uk.comp.os.linux Subject: Star-1.5 source has been released *************** Please have a look at the German open Source Center BerliOS at www.berlios.de BerliOS will continue to support free hosting of cryptography projects even when US laws change and don't allow to host cryptography projects in the USA. Also look at sourcewell.berlios.de, the first Open Source announcement service that itself is implemented as Open Source project. *************** Star is the fastest tar archiver for UNIX Star has many improvements compared to other tar implementations (including gnu tar). See below for a short description of the highlight of star. Star is located on: ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/star Changes since star-1.5.a16: - made handlecond()/raisecond() portable in libschily - Extended README.hpux to mention how to compile in 64 bit mode. - Added a security check for "/../" in the path for the "rmt" program that helps to prevent user from opening /dev/../etc/passwd in case there is no /etc/default/rmt - Add a security check in star's extract mode. Files containing /../ will be skipped by default. Exceptions are -w or -.. (the latter is a new option) has been specified - New option -.. to tell star that extracting files containing /../ in the path name is OK. - New option -secure-links to tell star to skip hard links and symbolic links that have a link name starting with / or contain "/../" in the link name. Note that it is impossible for a tar implementation to prevent any possible exploit. It is the duty of the user to act carefully. For this reason, -secure-links has not made the default behavior. It cannot work 100% correctly but it gives a wrong feeling of security. TODO: Check whether the UID/GID in the archive will fit into uid_t/gid_t and map the owner/group to nobody if thee are problems. This does not seem to make sense for backup/restore operations on file servers: Files for which the owner/group name could not be resolved should be mapped to the UID/GID values for "nobody" found in /etc/passwd or /etc/group. If these names could not be resolved, then the old SunOS-4.x NFS values 65534 are used. Revision history (short) 1982 First version on UNOS (extract only) 1985 Port to UNIX (fully functional version) 1985 Added pre Posix method of handling special files/devices 1986 First experiments with fifo as external process. 1993 Remote tape access 1993 diff option 1994 Fifo with shared memory integrated into star 1994 Very long filenames and sparse files 1994 Gnutar and Ustar(Posix.1-1988) handling added 1994 Xstar format (extended Posix.1-1988) defined and introduced 1995 Ported to many platforms 1999 Support for Win32 (Cygwin) 1999 base 256 support to overcome limitation with octal fields 2001 Large file support 2001 Support for POSIX.1-2001 extended headers 2001 Support for ACLs in POSIX.1-2001 extended headers 2002 Support for extended file flags in POSIX.1-2001 extended headers 2002 Support for extended inode meta data and meta files 2003 Error control added to allow to selectively ignore error contitions Supported platforms: Virtually any! Known to work: SunOS 4.x, Solaris (SunOS 5.x), Linux, HP-UX, DG/UX, IRIX, AIX, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, OSF-1, True-64, QNX, BeOS, Apollo Domain/OS, Next-STep, OS/2, SCO-openserver, SCO-unixware, Caldera OpenUnix, Cygwin (Win32), Sony NewsOS, BSDi (BSD/OS), QNX, Apple Rhapsody, MacOS X, AmigaOS, GNU Hurd Joerg ------------------------------------------------------------- Star is the fastest known implementation of a tar archiver. Star is able to make backups with far more than 10MB/s if the disk and tape drive support such a speed. This is more than double the speed that ufsdump will get. In 1996, Ampex got 13.5 MB/s with their DLT tape drive which is a modified professional digital video tape drive and not related to Quantum's DLT type drives. Ufsdump got a maximum speed of about 6MB/s with the same hardware. Star development started 1982, the first complete implementation has been done in 1985. I never did my backups with other tools than star. Its main advantages over other tar implementations are: fifo - keeps the tape streaming. This gives you faster backups than you can achieve with ufsdump, if the size of the filesystem is > 1 GByte. remote tape support - a fast RMT implementation that has no probems to saturate a 100 Mb/s network. accurate sparse files - star is able to reproduce holes in sparse files accurately if the OS includes the needed support functions. This is currently true for Solaris-2.3 to Solaris-2.5.1 pattern matcher - for a convenient user interface (see manual page for more details). To archive/extract a subset of files. sophisticated diff - user tailorable interface for comparing tar archives against file trees This is one of the most interesting parts of the star implementation. no namelen limitation - Pathnames up to 1024 Bytes may be archived. (The same limitation applies to linknames) This limit may be expanded in future without changing the method to record long names. deals with all 3 times - stores/restores all 3 times of a file (even creation time) With POSIX.1-2001 the times are in nanosecond granularity. Star may reset access time after doing backup. On Solaris this can be done without changing the ctime. does not clobber files - more recent copies on disk will not be clobbered from tape This may be the main advantage over other tar implementations. This allows automatically repairing of corruptions after a crash & fsck (Check for differences after doing this with the diff option). automatic byte swap - star automatically detects swapped archives and transparently reads them the right way automatic format detect - star automatically detects several common archive formats and adopts to them. Supported archive types are: Old tar, gnu tar, ansi tar, star, POSIX.1-2001 PAX, Sun's Solaris tar. automatic compression detect - star automatically detects whether the archive is compressed. If it has been compressed with a compression program that is compatible to decompression with "gzip" or "bzip2", star automatically activates decompression. fully ansi compatible - Star is fully ANSI/Posix 1003.1 compatible. See README.otherbugs for a complete description of bugs found in other tar implementations. Star is the first tar implementation that supports POSIX.1-2001. support for ACLs and file flags - star supports Access Control Lists and extended file flags (as found on FreeBSD and Linux). Support to archive and restore other file properties may be easily added. support for all inode metadata - star supports to put all inode metadata on the archive. This allows future versions of star to perform true incremental dumps. Have a look at the manual page, it is included in the distribution. Author: Joerg Schilling Seestr. 110 D-13353 Berlin Germany Email: joerg@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de, js@cs.tu-berlin.de schilling@fokus.fhg.de Please mail bugs and suggestions to me.