dds2index1

Usage

Overview

dds2index creates an index file that is required by the file extraction utility dds2tar(1). It works on tar archives stored on dds tape devices (DAT). Since the file structure of the tape archives is used to extract the files, the archive must be an uncompressed tar archive. But compression by the transparent signal processor of the tape device is allowed.

The index created by dds2index is written to stdout by default and should normally be stored on hard disk as indexfile for later use by dds2tar(1).

The default tape device to read from is /dev/nst0, which may be overridden with the environment variable TAPE, which in turn may be overridden with the -f device option. The device must be a SCSI tape device.

Options

-f devicefile

device of the tape archive. Must be a character special file.

-t indexfile

write the index to indexfile, not to stdout.

-z,--compress

write the index in (gzip) compressed mode.

--help

print some screens of online help with examples through a pager and exit immediatley.

OPTIONS you didn't really need

-b, --block-size

Set the maximal blocksize, dds2index can handle.

--z, --no-compress

Don't filter the archive file through gzip.

-v,--verbose

verbose mode. Print to stderr what is going on.

-h,--hash-mode

Print a hash sign '#' to stderr for each MB read from tape.

-V,--version

Print the version number of dds2index to stderr and exit immediately.

Examples

Example of getting the index from the default tape /dev/nst0 and storing it in file archive.idx:

dds2index -v -t archive.idx

Warning

This program can only read records (tar is calling them tape blocks) up to 32 kbytes. A bigger buffer will cause problems with the Linux device driver.

Environment

The environment variable TAPE overrides the default tape device /dev/nst0.

Files

/dev/nst0

default tape device file. Must be a character special file.