On Mar 3,  9:20am, gabriel rosenkoetter wrote:
} 
} But supposing I don't want my backups in dump format, but in USTAR?
} pax(1) lets me do that... but not remotely. GNU tar lets me do it,
} remotely too.

     Traditionally tar didn't support rmt.  I just checked tar on
Solaris 8 and it doesn't.  The man page suggests using rsh and dd if
you want to use remote tape drives.

     Direct support of rmt seems to be an extension, which isn't found
in a lot of versions of tar.  Although the current release of GNU tar
from ftp.gnu.org supposedly has it, it is buggy and doesn't work (I
found this out the hard way).  Of course, the version on alpha.gnu.org
has the fix; but, I tend to avoid software that is considered alpha.
Unfortunately, the version on ftp.gnu.org is grossly out of date.  It's
about time that the GNU tar developers did something about that.

} If you're going to remove basic functionality that exists, right
} now, in the distributed OS, you either need to justify it really

     I'm not sure that I would consider it basic functionality since it
isn't a standard feature of tar.  However, you could certainly argue
that since the NetBSD version of tar includes it, any replacement
should; and, that would be a valid argument.  Considering that Christos
has implemented the feature, the point is probably moot now anyways.

}-- End of excerpt from gabriel rosenkoetter