Ok, (as I'd forgot to mention) links are a _really_ bad idea. Even so I
didn't realise quite how bad they were!
Apperently the VFAT needs some more cleaning, I imagine when perfect the
short names will have no effect what so ever if the filesystem is mounted
as a VFAT partiton, the only way you'll be able to do anything with them
is with the SAMBA ioctls.
On Sun, 1 Aug 1999, Khimenko Victor wrote:
> On Sun, 1 Aug 1999, Riley Williams wrote:
> > ... why one should be forced
> > to run something like dosemu just for that one task, especially when
> > one can back up everything but the vfat partitions without doing so.
> >
> Since noone fixed tar so far :-) That's all. All needed ioctl's are in
> place. I'm happy with dosemu solution and if you are not then you can fix
> tar...
The problem with linuxlfnbk (or rather I imagine it'd be a shortname backup)
is how do you restore the data ? There's no way to control the short name
VFAT uses is there ?
The DOSEMU method looks good, but after running the doslfnbk you have to
remount the partiton as an MSDOS one to backup using the short names;
awkward. Then how do you restore? I'd not be suprised if you have to boot
DOS to put the LFN's back.
Altering tar is not a solution, you then have to do cpio, afio, bru, mobu
as well as yobu and fdtsobu.
My suggestion with the severly mangled filenames would work with any program
but still has the problem that the filesystem needs remounting in a special
"backup mode".
Ok, possibility (1)
Have a "backup mode" for processes, any process in this mode will
see and be able to control both long an short names as one.
I don't know what the best way of doing it would be:
the process has a particular user or group id specified at mount?
some sort of user level LD_PRELOAD'd library?
a bit in the process table set by system call ?
The filenames returned/used should only differ from the long names if
the short filename is not the same as the short name you'd get creating
the file in an empty directory.
Possibility (2)
SFN_backup and Restore for linux.
This needs a "set_dosfn(lfn, sfn)" ioctl/call in the kernel.
There is a possibility of syncronization problems between the get_sfn and
the actual backup of the file (possibly hours later).
It still leaves the door open for a modified version of tar/cpio/etc or
a LD_PRELOADED library.
Possibility (3)
Ignore it, it's a windows problem :-) :-)
(Scheesh! All these hoops just for gui-dos! :-) )
PS: fdtsobu == "Fred down the street's own backup utility" !!
--
Rob. (Robert de Bath <http://poboxes.com/rdebath>)
<rdebath @ poboxes.com> <http://www.cix.co.uk/~mayday>
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