(tar)Portability

Write Protection

Comparing

Being Careful

Making `tar' Archives More Portable
===================================

   Creating a `tar' archive on a particular system, meant to be later
useful on many other machines and with other versions of `tar', is more
a challenge than you might think.  `tar' archive formats evolved since
the first versions of Unix, many such formats are flying around, not
always comptabile between them.  This section wants to discuss a few
problems, and give some advice, for making `tar' archives more portable.

   One golden rule is simplicity.  For example, limit your `tar'
archives to contain only regular files and directories, avoiding other
kind of special files.  Do not attempt to save sparse files or
contiguous files as such.  Let's discuss a few more problems, in turn.

Portable Names

Symbolic Links

Old V7 and POSIX

Checksumming Problems