How to copy a tar diskette
rcnewton
I have a program I purchased for an old Xenix system on a 1.2 mb 5 1/4"
floppy diskette. It appears to be in tar format. Tar tv shows the files
with leading ./'s.
I would like to copy it to a 3 1/2" 1.44 mb diskette in the original
format for installation. I tried extracting it to a temporary
subdirectory thinking I could then tar it back to the 3.5 diskette but
unfortunately it extracts it to multiple subdirectories.
I haven't had to do this before. Any help appreciated !
Richard
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Stuart J. Browne
Have you tried to dd the image from the 1.2, then dd it out to the 1.44?
Assumptions:
5 1/4" = /dev/fd0
3 1/2" = /dev/fd1
dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/dev/fd1 bs=32b
or
dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/tmp/file.dump bs=32b
dd of=/dev/fd1 if=/tmp/file.dump bs=32b
see how that works.
Even though there will be un-used space, I can't see this *not* working.
Failing that, extract it, tar it up again:
mkdir -p /tmp/files
cd /tmp/files
tar xvf /dev/fd0
tar cvf /dev/fd1 ./*
Some thigns to try.
bkx
Bela Lubkin
Stuart J. Browne suggested several ways.
At first I read this as you were going to try installing the Xenix
_operating system_ from different size diskettes. I know that doesn't
work, the install code is different on each size of disk, expects to
find the rest of the install on the same type of disk as it was
originally shipped on.
For an installable app, transferring to a different size disk should
work.
Stuart wrote:
> mkdir -p /tmp/files
> cd /tmp/files
> tar xvf /dev/fd0
> tar cvf /dev/fd1 ./*
This should work, with a couple of subtleties. One is this: the
original archive might be absolute (files named "/path/to/file"); it
might be dot-relative ("./path/to/file"); or it might be
nothing-relative ("path/to/file").
If it's absolute, the steps above will fail since the extraction step
writes all over your root. You can safely extract such an archive with
the "A" flag:
tar xvfA /dev/fd0
but you will still have trouble creating a new archive with the same
layout. Fortunately, absolute is pretty unlikely.
Dot-relative vs. nothing-relative might not matter; it depends on the
program's install script. Stuart's `tar cvf /dev/fd1 ./*` creates a
dot-relative archive; if the original was nothing-relative, you would
want to use `tar cvf /dev/fd1 *`.
None of these will capture dot-files in the root of the install. That
is, if the archive originally contained:
./path/to/file
./.mydotfile
".mydotfile" will not match "*".
All in all, the `dd` method is much less likely to introduce vagaries
which might trip up the program's install script.
>Bela<
Jean-Pierre Radley
| rcnewton wrote:
|
| > I have a program I purchased for an old Xenix system on a 1.2 mb 5 1/4"
| > floppy diskette. It appears to be in tar format. Tar tv shows the files
| > with leading ./'s.
| >
| > I would like to copy it to a 3 1/2" 1.44 mb diskette in the original
| > format for installation. I tried extracting it to a temporary
| > subdirectory thinking I could then tar it back to the 3.5 diskette but
| > unfortunately it extracts it to multiple subdirectories.
| >
| > I haven't had to do this before. Any help appreciated !
|
| Stuart J. Browne suggested several ways.
|
| At first I read this as you were going to try installing the Xenix
| _operating system_ from different size diskettes. I know that doesn't
| work, the install code is different on each size of disk, expects to
| find the rest of the install on the same type of disk as it was
| originally shipped on.
I have a rather clear recollection that the first GT distribution of
Xenix that I bought was shipped to me by Lee Penn on 5.25" media; they
then copied all the diskettes for me to 3.5" diskettes; on the N1 boot
diskette, it was necessary to dd in the /etc/fd135ds18boot0 file, and I
then installed from the 3.5 set.
--
JP