laris,de.comp.os.linux.misc,de.comp.os.unix,linux.dev.admin,lin-
ux.dev.apps,maus.os.linux,maus.os.lin-
ux68k,maus.os.unix,uk.comp.os.linux Subject: Star-1.2 source  has
been released

Star is the fastest tar archiver for UNIX

Star  has  many improvements compared to other tar imlementations
(including gnu tar). See below for a  short  description  of  the
highlight of star.

Star is located on:

ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix/star

This  release is mostly a bugfix release and now gives a new sta-
ble base release in preparation of future changes.

Changes since star-1.1:

        Fixed some problems with the -z option         Fixed some
oddities with the -listnew option         Fixed a bug that caused
a coredump with -nullout         Added support for the  different
behavior  of  the  chown()  syscall                 in Linux that
caused problems with extracting                 suid  root  files
on  Linux          Allow the -C option to work with the listfile=
option too         New option -dodesc         Added the  code  to
use  the  _FIOAI ioctl on Solaris to speed up                 ar-
chiving  sparse  files  >  200   times.   You   need   a   hacked
                ufs  filesystem  in  order to use this on Solaris
2.6                 ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix/kernel/ufs


Revision history (short)

1982    First version on UNOS (extract only) 1985    Port to UNIX
(fully  funtional version) 1985    Added pre Posix method of han-
dling special files/devices 1986    First experiments  with  fifo
as external process.  1993    Remote tape access 1993    diff op-
tion  1994    Fifo  with  shared  memory  integrated  into   star
1994    Very  long  filenames and sparse files 1994    Gnutar and
Ustar(Posix) handling added 1994    Xstar format (extended Posix)
defined and introduced 1995    Ported to many platforms

Supported platforms:

SunOS  4.x,  Solaris (SunOS 5.x), Linux, HP-UX, DG/UX, IRIX, AIX,
FreeBSD, NetBSD

Joerg

-------------------------------------------------------------
                                   This  gives you faster backups
than                                   you can achieve with  ufs-
dump,   if  the                                     size  of  the
filesystem is > 1 GByte.

        pattern matcher         - for a convenient user interface
                                   (see  manual page for more de-
tails).                                    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 limita-
tion 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)
                                  may reset access time after do-
ing backup

        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  re-
pairing  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 transpar-
ently reads them the right way

        automatic format detect - star automatically detects sev-
eral common                                   archive formats and
adopts to them.                                    Supported  ar-
chive  types  are:                                   Old tar, gnu
tar, ansi tar, star.

        fully ansi compatible   - Star is fully ANSI/Posix 1003.1
compatible.                                     See README.other-
bugs for a complete description
of bugs found in other tar implementations.