Need assistance with afio problem.

[Michael E. Haws]

In article <1991May26.203103.19212 at chinacat.unicom.com>, chip at chinacat.unicom.com (Chip Rosenthal) writes:
> In article <446 at yonder.UUCP> michael at yonder.UUCP (Michael E. Haws) writes:
> >find /usr /u -print | afio -oZ -L/back/log | dd of=/dev/rct0 ibs=10b obs=1000b

> I'm concerned that the `Z' option
> might be compressing the backup.  

It is.

> If this is the case, methinks you
> are making a *big* mistake.  For all intents and purposes, if one bit
> is corrupt in an LZW compressed file, the following contents are
> unrecoverable.  Using compress on backup volumes is penny-wise and
> megatons-foolish.
> 
> -- 
> Chip Rosenthal     <chip at chinacat.Unicom.COM>  |  Don't play so
> Unicom Systems Development      512-482-8260   |    loud, Mr. Collins.

It is my impression that you are suggesting that I never keep compressed
data on my hard disk, since this data would be subject to the same 
potential problem when trying to recover it from a tape archive.  Or have
I missed something?

As for the contents following a corrupt bit being unrecoverable,  I
intentionally corrupted a random bit in a compressed file and
was able to successfully uncompress the file and although it did have
the random character corrupted, the remainder of the file was intact.

-- 
Michael E. Haws             "Keep the blue side up"          w - (303) 986-2370
boulder!yonder!michael                                       h - (303) 232-0628
michael%yonder at csn.org