Version History

4.4.0

New

• Change so that there is only one program, taper, which presents the user with a menu so that s/he can select which program to run
• Allows preferences to be changed within taper. Also allows saving of preferences to preference file or as command line command
• Made restore a bit more intelligent. If you just want to restore a directory (with no files in it) or devices etc.., then it uses the information in the info file & doesn't have to read anything in from the archive

Changes

• Changed the completion message from "Backup completed successfully" to "Backup completed". Even though the screen reported errors (if any) people were getting confused saying that how could backup have completed successfully if there were errors. The fact is that these errors were non-fatal errors, and therefore, IMHO, backup did complete successfully. But due to popular demand, the message has been changed. Of course, this applies to mkinfo & backup as well.
• Changed the TAPER.DOC file to reflect better information about SCSIs especially with regard to rewinding & non-rewinding devices.
• Changes to the documentation to reflect the fact that you don't need to do a 'make dep' anymore
• Changed the 'update' option in backup to follow the format of other options: ie. on = +u (or --update-on) and off = -u (or --update-off)

Bug Fixes

• Problem with the restore tree if files were being backed up individually rather than by directory selection
• Problem in backup when selecting files. If you selected a file and then selected the directory in which the file resided, the file was backed up twice. Now backup will recognize when files have been selected twice and act accordingly
• Problem in working out common path (common.c:make_cf) - incorrectly counting number of files in archive
• Multiple bug problems with the restore tree

4.3.0

New

• Restore is now fairly intelligent. That is, it works out which volume files are on and skips to that volume immediately. It also realizes when no more files are to be read from a particular volume and stops reading from that volume
• Prints the number bytes in archive in both restore & backup
• Added a -w num option to restore which tells restore to show only those files on volume 'num'. Default value of 0 means show all volumes

Changes

• Changed "Average transfer rate" to "Average backup rate" since it is not an average transfer rate - it takes into account time to advance volumes, rewind tape etc.. Similarly, "Average restore/mkinfo rate"
• More Makefile tweaks to improve performance
• Made some improvements to byte counts - still ignores tape headers and volume headers but this really is negligible
• Rationalised the use of non-rewinding & rewinding tape devices. The non-rewinding tape device is used only to reposition the tape, otherwise the rewinding device is used.
• Restore prints the volume a file is on and also the position in the archive that the file in
• Print directory (from restore) also prints the above two pieces of information
• User interface for restore changed. The files on an archive are now presented in tree form.
• Made the user interface with regard to restore and multiple volumes a bit clearer and more logical.

Bug Fixes

• Wasn't erasing tape correctly in backup and flush_buffers
• Problem displaying full pathname in top left window of backup if pathname was wider than window
• In backup, wouldn't enter a link that pointed to a directory
• Forgot to update volume/tape table in mkinfo
• Incorrectly printing month file was backed up in restore

4.2.1

New

• Checks to see if it can open get tape device status before writing to it. To avoid problems with no tape in drive.

Changes

• Changed the making of .depend in the Makefile. Slightly quicker now
• Cleaned up the log level 3 messages and make them more detailed

Bug Fixes

• None Squashed

4.2.0

New

• Added a -u [--update] option in backup. If -u is specified, and a taper backup exists on the backup device, taper will automatically select all files that have been changed since the backup was made. Equivalent preference file option is UPDATE
• Added a title line showing the name and ID of archive
• Added another place where preferences can be stored. If a .taper_prefs doesn't exist in /$HOME, then taper now looks in /usr/local/etc (can be changed in common.h). This allows global defaults to be used without having to set environment variables
• Added option [-j num, --proc-device] for ignoring the /proc filesystem. Program which_device will attempt tell you which device your /proc filesystem is mounted on. See TAPER.DOC for more details
• New program mktape (to prepare tapes for taper use - only needed if your tape drive writes leading zeroes) and testzero (to see if your tape drive write leading zeroes). See TAPER.DOC for more details

Changes

• Changed the -o [-/+-overwrite option] in restore so that three levels are available: -o 0 = no overwrite (if the file exists, then it is not overwritten); -o 1 = more recent overwrite (if the file on the backup device is more recent than the file on the hard disk, then the hard disk file is overwritten. If the file on the backup device is older than the one on the hard disk, then it is not overwritten); -o 2 = unconditional overwrite (the hard disk file is always overwritten)
• When a program is finished, prints how many warnings & how many errors were encounterd
• Changed the word 'Volume' to 'Archive' in backup & restore to make it more consistent with the documentation
• Changed default color of directory to black on green
• Changed the handling of long (GNU style) options. Instead of [+/-]-option, you now use --option-on or --option-off. See TAPER.DOC for more details
• Removed the +/-e (--erase-tape) option. You can use the append option to do the same thing. If you specified --append-off (or -a), and if there is data on the tape, then taper will erase the existing archive and replace it with the new archive.
• Changed handling of leading zeros problem. If your tape drive writes leading zeroes, define the appropriate variable in the Makefile. When doing backups, you will have to use mktape to prepare tapes for taper use. Taper will not automatically erase tapes for you. If you use an unprepared taper tape, then you will run into problems. See TAPER.DOC for more details
• Changed handling of directory sizes in sel_restore to make it quicker on large archives.
• In restore, prints the position in archive of each file

Bug Fixes

• Problem with -d option in restore (trying to open status_box)
• Problem in restore if archive was empty
• Erase tape when prompting for 2nd, 3rd.. tape of backup
• Rewind tape after finished writing in multiple tape backups
• Problem if backup extended by less than one blocksize onto a new tape
• Problem with calculating how many files to advance when appending to multi-tape archive

4.1.0

New

• Added support for multiple tape archives. Required a change to the info file structure therefore, previous taper backups will need to have their info files recreated (easily done with mkinfo - no need to re-backup)
• Changed Mkinfo to provide a nice screen (user interface change only)
• Enabled escape mkinfo (of course, if escaped, the info file is incomplete)
• Logged errors if failed to make a directory in restore
• Created directory for info files if doesn't exist
• When reading in the tape header at the beginning of the tape, ignores leading zeroes
• Added a message box at end of backup/restore/mkinfo saying that everything went OK
• Added support for long options (GNU style)

Changes

• Internal code change so that the common code between mkinfo & restore is in common.c
• Changes $ in filenames to \$ to avoid shell expansions when decompressing & compressing files
• Filename changed to taper-4.1.tar.gz (instead of taper41.tar.gz) to bring it in line with other Linux packages
• Apart from the tape header, information is written to the tape device in blocks. The size of a block defaults to 28K, but can be changed with the -x option (BLOCK_SIZE in preference file) - the old -x option (or MAX_TRANSFER_SIZE preference option) has been superseeded by this.
• Changed name of README to TAPER.DOC (it was too big to be a README file)

Bug Fixes

• Error in calculating volume count when using mkinfo
• Error handling soft links in mkinfo
• Added BOTH option in preference file (was in documentation but never made it into program)
• The preference file option for location of info files is TAPER_INFO_FILES. The README was incorrect and has been updated
• Fixed bug that caused extra directories to be created if an absolute path was supplied with -r in restore
• If backed up an absolute pathname, can now restore using that absolute pathname

4.0.2

New

• Added option -x num which allows one to specify the maximum number of bytes to transfer to the tape device in one hit. This is to avoid variable mode SCSI drives returning a EOVERFLOW error

Changes

• Changed the code for parsing arguments so that some of it is modularized in common.c. In preparation for multiple tape archives
• Internal changes to reading/writing to tape. All calls pass through tape_read & tape_write in common.c.

Bug Fixes

• None Squashed

4.0.1

New

• More detailed error messages if couldn't open/read/write to backup & info files etc..

Changes

• No Changes

Bug Fixes

• Fixed -p option not working correctly
• Changed preferences LOG_FILE & LOG_LEVEL to LOGFILE & LOGLEVEL to match what was in the README file

4.0.0

New

• Command Line Options

  -?	on the command line prints help on command line options
  -v	prints current version
  +/-y	allows the directory to be displayed in alphabetical order or the order in which the files were backed up. +y means sort in alpha order
  -/+z	if on, then confirmation is required when a directory is selected for restore/backup. If off, no confirmation is sought

• Checksums are calculated for every file that is written to the archive. When restoring, if the checksum is not correct, the file is still restored but the checksum error is recorded in the log file.
• Better support of errors while backing up (eg. unable to read file because no permission etc..).
• Added support for log files

Changes

• Use of archive information files. Please see the README file and the VERSION4 file for details of the change. This means that version 4 archives are not compatble with other taper archives.
• Lots of command line letters have been changed. Mainly to allow accommodation of feature addition.
• Changed the handling of stripping pathnames. The full pathname is stored in the information file and on tape. You have the option at restore time of stripping excess pathnames. See README for more details.
• Played around with restore & backup status boxes a bit. Nothing major.
• Changed the way selected files are stored in the restore module. Should speed things up.

Bug Fixes

• Makes filename compare case sensitive (as should be under U*IX)
• Stopped calling setup_colors if only wanting to print directory in restore
• Checked to make sure that a second argument was supplied for those options that required an argument (eg. -f, -t).
• Had a heart attack on recursive links. Now if a link points to itself, it is ignored