[afio.2.4.1/README:]

This is afio 2.4.1.  

The current maintainer is Koen Holtman (koen@stack.urc.tue.nl).

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Afio makes cpio-format archives.  It deals somewhat gracefully with
input data corruption.  Supports multi-volume archives during
interactive operation.  Afio can make compressed archives that are
much safer than compressed tar or cpio archives.  Afio is best used as
an `archive engine' in a backup script.

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See the file SCRIPTS for more information on backup scripts that use
afio.

See the file PORTING for information on compiling afio on non-Linux
machines.

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This afio version is based on a Linux port of afio 2.3.  Since the
original port, significant functionality has been added and some bugs
were removed.  While primarily intended for use under Linux, this code
should be portable to other UNIX versions.  As far as I know, there
has been no afio development beyond 2.3 outside the Linux community.
Thus, it should be safe to advertise ports of this code to other UNIX
versions as ports of afio version 2.4.1.

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Afio has far too many options and features (some of which are not even
in the manual page).  Anything in afio that doesn't relate to reading
or writing an archive from/to a simple file or pipe or backing up and
restoring from floppies remains untested.

In particular, nobody has verified if the options -p -b -d -e -g -h
-j -l -m -u and -R and the special case archive names `!command'
and `system:file' really do what they claim to do.

Typical `tested' afio uses are
 ... | afio -o -v -f -b 1024 -s 1440x -F -Z /dev/fd0H1440
 ... | afio -o -v -s 1440k -F -V -Z -G1 /dev/fd0H1440
 afio -oZvx /tmp/pipe1 </tmp/pipe2
 afio -i -Z -k -v -x -n /tmp/pipe1
 ... | afio -s 512m -c 1024 -Z -T 20k -G 1 -E /backup/compressed -v -o \
       -L /backup/LOG -z /dev/tape 2>/dev/tty8 >/var/adm/backup

WARNING1: The Linux floppy drivers below kernel version 1.1.54 do not
allow afio to find out if a floppy write error has happened.  If you
are running a kernel below 1.1.54, afio will happily fail to backup to
(say) a write protected disk and not report anything wrong!  The only
way to find out about write errors in this case is by watching the
kernel messages, or by switching on the verify option.

WARNING2: the code for -F (and -f and -K) is a complete mess.  It will
probably work in the normal case, but don't expect it to handle a
write/verify error correctly.  If you get such an error, best thing is
to restart afio completely.

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