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-1.3 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

Changes since star-1.3:

-       Fixed  a  bug  introduced a few days before releasing 1.3
that         caused star -atime not to work on Solaris.

        Star now again is able to do archiving without  modifying
        times on Solaris if the user us root.


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, OpenBSD, OSF-1, True-64, BeOS, Apollo Domain/OS,
Next-STep, OS/2, SCO-openserver,  SCO-unixware,  Cygwin  (Win32),
Sony NewsOS,  BSDi (BSD/OS), QNX, Apple Rhapsody, MacOS X

Joerg

-------------------------------------------------------------
Star is the fastest known implementation of a tar archiver.  Star
is  able  to  make  backups with more than 12MB/s if the disk and
tape drive support such a speed. This is  more  than  double  the
speed  that ufsdump will get.  Ampex got 13.5 MB/s with their new
DLT tape drive.  Ufsdump got a maximum speed of about 6MB/s  with
the same hardware.

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.

Have a look at the manual page, it is included in  the  distribu-
tion.

Author:

Joerg Schilling Seestr. 110 D-13353 Berlin Germany