Hi All,

I do not seem to be able to run star with the correct options despite some
experimenting ... and was hoping you could correct my errors.

I seem to have done this successfully in the past, but I am getting
inappropriate results this time round. This is the fs I am trying to back
up:
================================================== ======
# ls -la /media/hda5
total 208
drwxr-xr-x 24 root root 4096 Feb 1 12:56 .
drwxr-xr-x 14 root root 0 Feb 1 11:45 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Dec 25 04:02 bin
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 18 19:37 boot
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 18 19:37 data
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 19 00:37 dev
drwxr-xr-x 82 root root 12288 Feb 1 08:43 etc
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 18 19:37 home
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Feb 21 2005 initrd
drwxr-xr-x 12 root root 4096 Jan 31 04:02 lib
drwx------ 2 root root 16384 Nov 18 19:35 lost+found
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Feb 1 07:55 media
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Dec 23 10:46 misc
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Feb 21 2005 mnt
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Feb 21 2005 opt
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 18 19:37 proc
drwxr-x--- 6 root root 4096 Jan 3 05:55 root
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 12288 Nov 23 04:02 sbin
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 19 00:37 selinux
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Feb 21 2005 srv
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 18 19:37 sys
drwxrwxrwt 6 root root 4096 Feb 1 08:43 tmp
drwxr-xr-x 14 root root 4096 Nov 19 00:38 usr
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Nov 19 00:43 var
================================================== ======

The fs is shown to be 1.1G large:
================================================== ======
# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
...
/dev/hda5 5.8G 1.1G 4.5G 20% /media/hda5
================================================== ======

I want to save the backup on a USB drive on /media/sda1. Therefore I ran star
as root like this:

# cd /dev/sda1
# star -xattr -H=exustar -c -f hda5_root1.star /media/hda5 -C /media/sda1

After a lot of messages like these:
================================================== ======
star: No such file or directory. Cannot listxattr
for '/media/hda5/usr/sbin/dumpfilter'.
star: No such file or directory. Cannot listxattr
for '/media/hda5/usr/sbin/ethtool'.
star: No such file or directory. Cannot listxattr
for '/media/hda5/usr/sbin/traceroute6'.
star: No such file or directory. Cannot listxattr for '/media/hda5/usr/tmp'.
star: No such file or directory. Cannot listxattr
for '/media/hda5/usr/share/firstboot/modules/rootpassword.py'.
================================================== ======

... it eventually completes. What puzzles me is the size of the star archive,
which compared to a vanilla tar archive is massive:
================================================== ======
# ls -la /media/sda1
total 17294256
drwxr-xr-x 2 knoppix knoppix 4096 Feb 1 13:01 .
drwxr-xr-x 14 root root 0 Feb 1 11:45 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 932474880 Dec 6 13:50 hda5_root.star
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 867123200 Dec 6 13:26 hda5_root.tar
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 14486097920 Feb 1 13:13 hda5_root1.star
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 940288000 Feb 1 10:42 hda5_root1.tar
...
================================================== ======

Is this difference in size between the hda5_root1.tar and hda5_root1.star
expected? I also show above the previous back up I did as a comparison
(although I cannot recall exactly what options I chose to run star with).
--
Regards,
Mick

Mick <michaelkintzios@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> I do not seem to be able to run star with the correct options despite some
> experimenting ... and was hoping you could correct my errors.

Try the command lines from the example section in the man page ;-)

> The fs is shown to be 1.1G large:
> ================================================== ======
> # df -h
> Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
> ...
> /dev/hda5 5.8G 1.1G 4.5G 20% /media/hda5
> ================================================== ======
>
> I want to save the backup on a USB drive on /media/sda1. Therefore I ran star
> as root like this:
>
> # cd /dev/sda1
> # star -xattr -H=exustar -c -f hda5_root1.star /media/hda5 -C /media/sda1

This is a useless command line as -C /media/sda1 is executed after archiving
/media/hda5.

> After a lot of messages like these:
> ================================================== ======
> star: No such file or directory. Cannot listxattr
> for '/media/hda5/usr/sbin/dumpfilter'.
> star: No such file or directory. Cannot listxattr
> for '/media/hda5/usr/sbin/ethtool'.
> star: No such file or directory. Cannot listxattr
> for '/media/hda5/usr/sbin/traceroute6'.
> star: No such file or directory. Cannot listxattr for '/media/hda5/usr/tmp'.
> star: No such file or directory. Cannot listxattr
> for '/media/hda5/usr/share/firstboot/modules/rootpassword.py'.
> ================================================== ======

There seems to be a problem with xattr support on your system.
Unfortunately, Linux allows you not to install a sufficiently complete OS
basesystem.

Make sure that not only star supports xattrs.

> ... it eventually completes. What puzzles me is the size of the star archive,
> which compared to a vanilla tar archive is massive:
> ================================================== ======
> # ls -la /media/sda1
> total 17294256
> drwxr-xr-x 2 knoppix knoppix 4096 Feb 1 13:01 .
> drwxr-xr-x 14 root root 0 Feb 1 11:45 ..
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 932474880 Dec 6 13:50 hda5_root.star
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 867123200 Dec 6 13:26 hda5_root.tar
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 14486097920 Feb 1 13:13 hda5_root1.star
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 940288000 Feb 1 10:42 hda5_root1.tar
> ...
> ================================================== ======
>
> Is this difference in size between the hda5_root1.tar and hda5_root1.star
> expected? I also show above the previous back up I did as a comparison
> (although I cannot recall exactly what options I chose to run star with).

As I don't know what's in both files, I cannot comment.

If you create a tar archive with POSIX.1-2001 extensions, you get at least
1kB of additional meta-data per archived file.

GNU tar does not support Linux specific extensions...

Jörg

--
EMail:joerg@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
js@cs.tu-berlin.de (uni)
joerg.schilling@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily

On Sunday 01 February 2009, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> Mick <michaelkintzios@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi All,
> >
> > I do not seem to be able to run star with the correct options despite
> > some experimenting ... and was hoping you could correct my errors.
>
> Try the command lines from the example section in the man page ;-)

Thanks Joerg, it may not look like it but that's how I started.

> > I want to save the backup on a USB drive on /media/sda1. Therefore I ran
> > star as root like this:
> >
> > # cd /dev/sda1
> > # star -xattr -H=exustar -c -f hda5_root1.star /media/hda5 -C /media/sda1
>
> This is a useless command line as -C /media/sda1 is executed after
> archiving /media/hda5.

Does this mean that I should have '-C /media/sda1' before '/media/hda5' ?
--
Regards,
Mick

Mick <michaelkintzios@gmail.com> wrote:

> > > I want to save the backup on a USB drive on /media/sda1. Therefore I ran
> > > star as root like this:
> > >
> > > # cd /dev/sda1
> > > # star -xattr -H=exustar -c -f hda5_root1.star /media/hda5 -C /media/sda1
> >
> > This is a useless command line as -C /media/sda1 is executed after
> > archiving /media/hda5.
>
> Does this mean that I should have '-C /media/sda1' before '/media/hda5' ?

Using absolute paths (as you did) is a really bad idea and '-C /media/sda1'
before '/media/hda5' will not help you....

-C performs a chdir before processing the next arg

Useful is something like '-C /media/sda1' "."

If you like to do backups, you should tell star to archive more meta data
by using -dump instead of H=exustar.

-dump includes H=exustar but is more.

There are several examples in the man page and I still don't know what caused
your real problems.

A frequent problem on Linux is that not all files to support a specific feature
are present or that you first need to activate them. Did you use extended
attributes with other programs before?

Jörg

--
EMail:joerg@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
js@cs.tu-berlin.de (uni)
joerg.schilling@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily