Listing Tape Contents

[bambock]

Does anyone know if it's possible to list the first N items of a tape using cpio -t? Depending on the day of the backup the relative path may be "/" down versus "/docs".

It would be great to list the first 10 items without spinning through the entire tape. Also, I'd like to script this, so it wouldn't be required to CTRL-C to end the process after the tape content starts spewing out.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Ethan

 

[KenCunningham]

Messy but perhaps take the process id of the cpio -t and kill it after a certain number of seconds (experiment to find out how long it typically takes to give the the first listings) - a kind of self-aborting script.

The internet - allowing those who don't know what they're talking about to have their say.

 

[bambock]

That's what I thought, it was a little messy. I found a work around though; I check the restored contents for the child directory that I'm expecting and "cd" if necessary.

Thanks for the feedback.

Ethan

 

[p5wizard]

I'd do a "dd read" of a number of blocks from the tape and pipe that to cpio...

HTH,

p5wizard