On Sun, 4 Jun 2000 fantasy@eurosoccer.com wrote:

> On Sun, 4 Jun 2000, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, 4 Jun 2000, David Brownlee wrote:
> > 
> > > 	Using the -z optiont to tar may cause the data to be written to
> > > 	the drive in variable sized blocks.
> > 
> > Nope. But *with* -z, you'll go through the block tape device, in which
> > all blocks are at 1024 bytes.
> > tar will use the raw device, and will use larger blocks by default, and
> > you can use even larger blocks if you want to.
> 
> 	I would have thought tar would use the device specified, so it
> 	will use the same device both with and without -z. (I'm sorry -
> 	I didn't note whether the original poster mentioned whether they
> 	were using the block device).

How do you think the -z option is implemented...? :-)
Last I looked, tar forked off a gzip which it redirected data to/from.
Maybe it has changed. If so, then I apologize, and stand corrected.

	Johnny

Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                  ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt@update.uu.se           ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol