Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 3 Aug 1999 21:53:39 -0800 (AKDT) | From | Kent Overstreet <> | Subject | Re: Your backup is unsafe! |
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> > Ok, how about a program (like the one on the windows cd) that reads the > > long/short filename mappings and saves them in a file, then after you > > restore, it changes the 8.3 filenames back. Support might be needed in the > > kernel for the restore, and it's a bit of a hack, but it works and > > withought messing with anything more than we have to. > > > > The right thing, I think, is what was already proposed: an ioctl() to > get the short name, an ioctl() to set the short name, and a special > version of tar or cpio to do the actual backup. Your variant would of > course work too, using the same ioctl()s.
I just thought of something. We've already got these great *nix backup tools, and it's be kinda nice to be able to use them all with vfat. So, if we're going to do this by modifying tar or cpio, we would have several tools to modify, and the end user would have that many more things to keep track of. It wouldn't be hard to make it so they could use the modified version for all their backing up, but then it just gets to be a pain, and distributions (for example) might just start including only the vfat version, and then we've got some more crud throughout the system to deal with. And then someone else earlier mentioned how other filesystems have stuff that needs to get backed up, so we might as well include code to handle those filesystems. And in the end, it works, but we have some very bloated, crufty, programs. So, why don't we have a small program to just save (in the case of vfat) the 8.3 to LFN mappings via ioctl()s and then we can use whatever backup tool we feel like. And if we have another filesystem that has special attributes or whatever that need backing up, we write a small program save those. Viola! No cruft, everything's cleanly seperated so we don't have vfat stuff infecting Linux, and everyone's backups are safe.
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