Re: --delete for multi-volume archive dumps core

[Paul Eggert]

> From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Paul=20Lilley?= <address@hidden>
> Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2001 18:13:26 +0000 (GMT)
> 
> I have a problem with the -M multi-volume option in
> that it dumps core when attempting to --delete a
> member from one of the volumes (the volumes are
> written to files on the hdd not to a tape).

I'm tempted to just disallow that case, unless someone (probably you
:-) can come up with some code to fix the problem.  The deletion code
is hairy enough.

> What I am trying to achieve is to avoid having a
> file split between 2 volumes of a multi-volume set.

Surely a better approach would be to modify 'tar' so that it refuses
to split the file in the first place (unless the file is so large that
it won't fit on a single volume).  That would give you want you want,
right?  (It's just a simple matter of coding.  :-)

If you have the time to implement this, please start with the latest
test version in ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/tar/.  Thanks.