How do you plan to handle the "Read Only" flag?

Post #288,609

7/10/07 8:08:27 AM

A couple of things annoy me about doing backups to CD or DVD:

1) A lot of the time I encounter filenames that are too long or directories that are too deep to be written to the disk without changes.

2) The "read only" flag gets set when it gets written, so when the backup is restored all the R/W file attributes are wrong.

These limitations make most backups to CD or DVD useless for me (at least using Winders and Roxio and the like). I do backups to additional hard drives.

How do you handle these problems? Is it a Winders-only problem? Is there a magical CD or DVD file format that is fairly universal that takes care of 1)?

Thanks. And good luck with the annoying aspects of your task.

Cheers,
Scott.

Post #288,615

by static

7/10/07 8:49:10 AM

It's the filesystem.

You're running into the limitations of the ISO9660 file system. Do MS's "Joliet" extensions help? They should for the file-depth thing. But you will continue to have problems with the read-only flag. All files on an ISO9660 image are presented as Read-Only, so that's what you get when you copy the files off.

Linux can write an image on a CD-ROM of whatever filesystem you like. I remember stories years ago of ext2 CD-ROMs. At least that way you'd get the permissions correct, but if your problem is Windows oriented, I don't think it can help you.

Wade.

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Post #288,618

by folkert

7/10/07 9:34:52 AM

I use CDs abd DVDs as backup media rather than images

Write Once, Read Many. (or WORM)

basically compress up a file just about 4.4GB in size and write it to DVD. 700MB for CD.

That way I get around the whole Read-Only stuff and the path name problem.

But, I'll be damned as things just got fixed about 3 months ago with cdr-tools. cdr-tools is a fork of Joerg's crap, before he changed the license which made it even worse.

Debian did the fork to stabilize and fix LONG LONG LONG standing bugs and issues Joerg said were irrelevant and wouldn't be fixed, such as his stupid assed BUS:X,X,X addressing for the devices, especially since udev came along.

Joerg says Linux needs to just do it like Solaris, well that whole set of arguments has gone against him multiple time as it denigrates into him screaming bias and other things. Which of course gets him no where.

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Post #288,620

by Another Scott

7/10/07 10:30:52 AM

What do you use to compress the files?

Zip gets really pokey as the file size increases, but it's nearly universal on just about any platform. Any backups I make would have to be restorable on Winders, and ideally OS X as well. And Linux, of course.

I'd be nervous about going above 4 GB as well, in case something needed to go back on FAT32 (which has a 4 GB file size limit).

Thanks.

Cheers,
Scott.

Post #288,622

by folkert

7/10/07 11:25:04 AM

I use tar to make the archive, gzip or bzip2 to compress.

You make an iso filesystem with only the single archive file on it.

And if you mount the DVD it has the tar.gz (or bz2) on it.

tar zxf /media/dvd/backup01.tar.gz filename

Does the job just fine. Once the file is ON the DVD (after you create it and burn it to it) you just use it like any other backup media.

Remember you have to think of it like a tape. I've always written archive files to tape and not the tape device as it gets messy.

Of course this would also work on Windows in that way. BTW, all current GUI zip programs know and understand tar archives and also completely understand gzip files. Even in the Windows World. Heck even in W2K if you set a couple of registry entries, straight Windows explorer could traverse tar files and extract them from the .gz without add-ons.

But that is another story.

OSX shouldn't have *ANY* problem.

Post #288,649

by Another Scott

7/10/07 6:30:30 PM

Thanks. I'll check it out.

Post #288,625

by pwhysall

7/10/07 11:53:41 AM

Consider using 7-zip.

Cross-platform, Free, and squashes things dead good.

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Post #288,650

by Another Scott

7/10/07 6:32:41 PM

Thanks. It looks good. I'll bet FC/W can use it, too.

Post #288,679

by pwhysall

7/11/07 1:10:28 AM

FC/W? Wossat?

Post #288,695

by Another Scott

7/11/07 8:31:54 AM

FileCommander/W - a Norton Commander clone.

[link|http://silk.apana.org.au/fc.html|It]'s 32-bit, very functional, very stable, and being text mode - quick. It started out on OS/2. I've been using it since v0.09 or something like that.

[link|http://silk.apana.org.au/pub/fcw/fcw230-dev.zip|Here] is the latest beta version. You'll need the release version 2.20 to get the help file, etc., to know the function of the key combinations (beyond the NC keys, that is).

It's shareware, but I think it competes very well with a lot of the freeware file managers/editors/etc. out there.

There's occasional talk on the mailing list about a Linux version, but I don't think Brian has committed to that.

Cheers,
Scott.

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