6.8.0a4

Release Date: 20-April-97

• Support for networked drives - ie. can use the filename "remotemachine:/dev/tape", like tar.

• Optimize level at 6 instead of 2
• Less flickering in restore box
• Uses asm string routines if defined
• Change to make directory routines - slightly more efficient
• Added -I/usr/include/ncurses in the Makefile.common since that's where the default ncurses header files are now going
• Removed second index file (.2) - to save space - this means that info files need to be recreated for 6.8.0a4
• When processing info for restore, only loops through archive once, hence saving time
• When processing info for restore, also looks for most recent entries then and stores, which means that selecting in restore is a lot faster
• Added some more logging to try and find out why some drives seek in a manner taper doesn't understand
• Reversed change made a few versions ago - can't ESC back a menu. Trouble was some xterms send two ESCs when you press ESC, so was exiting.

• Bug with environment variables NTAPE and TAPE - was ignoring one
• Couldn't reindex files if one or both index files were missing
• Not processing --tape-name preference before -tape-name preference
• Problem toggling between most recent restore and absolute restore if you had selected the file from a prior volume
• Problem restoring files from multiple volumes in one restore session

6.8.0a3

Release Date: 11-April-97

New

• Added some more logging to can seek utility to try and fix the wangdet problem

• Removed support for eom command introduced into 6.7.4. Too many tape drives don't like it.
• In erase vols, changed user interface for entering # volumes to delete

• Fixed problem with toggling between incremental and full backup
• Occassionally, not all filles written out in backup
• Sometimes, wrong volume was written to backup - fixed bug and auto work around for those backups affected
• Doesn't backup up info files associated with backup being made
• Fixed problem in Makefile - -l$(FORM) -l$(CURSES) rather than the other way around
• Seg faulting if tried to select a file from the 'on archive' window
• Allowed you to select the same directory multiple times in restore
• In backup, not saving pos_in_archive in index files
• Problem with incremental backups
• Fixed problem with erasing volumes

6.8.0a2

Release Date: 30-mar-97

New

• Updated FAQ to reflect new version of ftape
• In selecting files to restore, can't go up beyond the common directory.

• Problem if restore or verify ran out of temporary disk space
• In verify, if the file had gone from disk, it was not deleting the associated temporary file.
• Not printing time archive backed up in top right window properly.

6.8.0a1

Release Date: 29-mar-97

NOTE NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS: yusuf@multiline.com.au

• New option for sizing directories during backup file selection (-M or --size-dirs). If TRUE (default), then directories are sized when selecting them in backup module. If FALSE, the nthe directories are not sized hence no size of backup is displayed.
• New option for unattended backups (-V or --unattended-id). If an archive ID is specified, then taper will only append unattended backups to the archive 'ID'. If another archive tape is in the drive, the backup won't be made and the user mailed
• Major change in info file handling. The info file is now a set of info files which is in the form of an mtree. This means that file details are not kept in memory and hence, the system load is dramatically reduced as is memory usage. This means that the option --memory-tight has gone. Also, the file is kept in alphabetical order so the option --sort-dir has gone. Info files have to be recreated to be used with this version. You do not have to recreate your backups, just the info files.
• New utility for the new info files. Reindex info file reindexes the info file in case of corruption. Also, it means that each index doesn't have to be archived if you want to save the info files.
• If filenames and paths are longer than fits on the screen, does what midnight commander does and prints beginning & end of filename with a '~' in the middle.
• New option in restore and backup windows. Pressing 'D' will give details about a file/directory.
• New option in restore and backup windows. Pressing 'L' will enable you to search through the archive or directory for a particular file
• New option in restore and backup windows. Pressing 'J' will allow you to jump to a particular directory.
• Taper has a web page at www.multiline.com.au/~yusuf/

• Changes in the command set in backing and restoring
  • Selecting a file for backing up or restoring changed from 's' to 'i' (include)
  • Saving a backup set changed from 'b' to 's' (save)
  • Restoring a backup set changed from 'l' to 'r' (restore)
• When saving preferences file names
  • ESC now aborts the process and ENTER accepts
  • Asks for confirmation before saving
• Changed handling for block sizes for zftape. Means that you can't have a block size < 2K.
• Changed the name of the option "hard-link" to "soft-links". This is in preparation for handling soft and hard links separately.
• Changes to the documentation. The changes file is in html form. The rest are unchanged.
• ESC goes up a menu
• documentation files are now in the docs directory
• if can't open the backup device at beginning of backup, tells user about error and gives opportunity to fix it
• aout support in the Makefile is gone
• When tape sizes are given in MB, assumes 1MB = 1,000,000 bytes because that is what some tape drive manufacturers state (this way, they can advertise their tape drive as 125MB, instead of 119MB like it should be)
• Changed size_t to ssize_t as per change in libraries
• When printing an archive directory, prints in archive order and then alphabetical order
• More logging in backup child

• Error in handling of end of tape: seg faulting if could write a partial block at end of tape
• If got an I/O error doing unattended backup, segmentation faulted out - now cleanly exits
• Seg fault if encountered an I/O error while reading and user tried to RETRY
• Overwrote device file entries sometimes
• If error in mkinfo, was hanging before return to main menu
• Hung if couldn't create write a backup/restore set

6.7.4

Release Date: 5-aug-96

• Information in the FAQ about parallel port tape drives.
• Can select the root directory in backup
• New preference : min-before-seek : allows user to specify how many blocks the tape needs to be advanced before doing a seek, rather than just streaming

• Removed allocation of zero bytes - wasn't a bug but some compilers barfed at allocating 0 bytes
• write_null_header returns error if error encountered
• prints version in log file
• since ncurses 1.9.9e, the curses.h file is placed in /usr/include so the Makefile has been changed to reflect that
• uses eom instead of fsf for appending to tapes - for the few tape drives that were slightly non-standard
• put a `signed' in front of definition of some variables for people who were using compilers that didn't default to signed variables if unspecified
• support for tape drives that commence block numbers that commence at 1 instead of 0
• if invalid tape in drive when restore selected, still allows you to browse archives that the system knows about

• ratios being printed with signs, rather than unsigned
• not correctly resetting sid/gid on restore
• seg faulting on backup abort
• not correctly removing old info file when overwriting archive
• bug in end of tape handling and I/O error handling for backup
• reworked reading/writing errors so they only read/write in block_sizes even in error conditions
• prints an error message if cannot position on a block

6.7.3

Release Date: 17-jun-96

• Nothing

• Removed -fno-common from CFLAGS in Makefile for production version

• If get an error while backing up, was not closing backup device
• Problem backing up files after excluded directory
• Bug fix in the file count for verify & restore
• Log file message problem in verifying
• In triple buffering, if child encountered an error, then the error recovery procedures sometimes got it wrong

6.7.2

Release Date: 17-jun-96

• Nothing

• In the selected window, prints the byte count if less than 1K

• Not removing co-ordinating pipes between write child & taper
• Memory overrun in add_missing_dirs fixed
• Error in restore if backed up one file only
• If had selected a file, backup marked all files with that filename as prefix as for backup. Didn't backup them up though (ie.cosmetic bug)
• Sometimes, file sizes in backup were not correct
• Bug in not auto-descending of directories
• If selected one file for full backup, was not printing size correctly - didn't affect backup which was done correctly (ie.cosmetic bug)
• Screen update in reading volume directory
• Few bugs in the co-ordinating of child writing & main process
• Bug causing errors while creating multiple directories
• In restore, allowed you to put wrong tape in drive

6.7.1

Release Date: 15-jun-96

• Nothing

• Use of pipes if using triple buffering to co-ordinate between parent & child writing process - should help system load immensely
• Use of IPC_PRIVATE for getting unique shared memory keyss rather than randomly trying keys

• Problem in identifying most recent file in multi-volume backup
• Problem with specific tape types handling in preference file
• Problem with re-allocating buffer errors on end of tape
• Memory being free'd twice --> segmentation fault at end of backup

6.7.0

Release Date: 6-jun-96

• If seg faults, tries to write the fact to log file
• Problem using libc 5.3.12 and binutils 2.6.0.12 - make sure you upgrade to binutils 2.6.0.14 if using libc 5.3.12 if taper doesn't work for you. No problems if using stable 5.2.x release
• Backup child checks for available disk space - if not enough waits until there is before compressing
• Error messages printed if restore or backup children cannot be started
• New option (+/-W) for reconstructing info files on archives created by taper version < 5.6
• New option (-Y) which specifies the minimum amount of disk space that must be free before a file is compressed
• Couple improvements to Makefile

• Added a suggestion in the docs about excluding netscape's cache directories
• When doing a mkinfo/verify/full restore, does not print an I/O error when advancing to non-existent volume
• Changed default mailing program from deliver to mail

• Problem with bg_backup & backup getting out of sync if you changed the exclude compress options
• bg_backup/restore weren't using the temp_dir option if you changed it via a preference file or via change preferences menu
• Doing a free on a block twice which results in a seg fault on some machines so all such references removed
• One more instance where a zombie process could end up plugged
• Problem with unattended backup crashing if tape needed overwriting
• Problem if restore had to get some files from one volume and some from another as part of the same directory to restore
• A few more 1024 filename lengths found and fixed

6.6.0

Release Date: 19-may-96

• New option (--tmp-dir or -P) which allows user to specify where temporary files should be stored - default is /usr/tmp
• New option (--one-file-system or -N) which tells taper not to descend other filesystems

• In the docs, now specifies that taper is not really designed for more than 30,000 files unless lots of memory is on hand (this will be addressed in a future version)
• When doing a selective restore, does not keep on searching through whole info file
• Workaround for "device busy" errors (problem with files not being automatically closed on program termination)
• Aligns variables to 8 byte boundary (rather than 4 byte). To accommodate 64 bit machines (ie. Alpha)
• Found a couple of more unaligned references
• Removed all references to longs
• Compiles cleanly - ie. no warnings
• Couple more log messages when reading in volume header

• Bug fix in string fields in forms
• Bug fix in automatically not sizing excluded directories
• If backing up file uncompressed, then was opening file read/write
• If problem compressing file, wasn't removing temporary files resulting in /tmp left with lots of undeleted files

6.5.1

Release Date: ??

• Nothing

• Changed the # in the sgml to &num so that it would work on postscript & html conversions
• If a directory is excluded, automatically doesn't size through tree
• Can abort sizing of directories in selecting files for backup

• Fixed a few errors is sgml file
• Seg fault occassionally in unattended backup
• Properly prints message about directories/files not found in unattended mode
• Totally closes file while getting next tape
• In menu, test mktape & test fast fsf were swapped

6.5.0

Release Date: 24-apr-96

• Compresses info files (can be turned off)
• Info files are now stored in little endian format and converted as necessary so are portable between machines
• If for some reason taper seg faults, attempts to clean up - ie. free memory & shared memory segments

• The magic number of volumes and tapes was changed to be a full four byte magic number. This was because when using big endian machines, taper was taking the zeros of the magic number to be leading zeroes
• Also excludes .bmp files from compression by default
• When making code more ansi compliant, the length of filenames became 1024 from 255. This resulted in significantly more memory usage. Changed back to 255.
• Removed the proceeding . from all file names (ie. .taper_log --> taper_log, .taper_info --> taper_info, .taper_prefs --> taper_prefs)
• As per ANSI, all references to inline removed

• If tape drive returned end of tape while doing mkinfo, tape size info was sometimes not correctly restored
• Bug in using regular files with new intelligent restore

6.4a

Release Date: 23-apr-96

• Nothing

• No Changes

• Problem compiling with gcc fixed
• Better handling of boundary code (porting issue)

6.4.0

Release Date: 22-apr-96

• New info file format - to accommodate more intelligent restoration
• More intelligent restoration - automatically skips to the correct tape AND correct block for restoration - avoids those long reads before getting to the file that you want
• New tape drive option - can_seek - TRUE if your drive supports a seek operation, FALSE otherwise
• New utility for above - test can_seek

• If doing a normal restore and encounter a checksum error, doesn't ask if end of backup - only asks when doing recreate info, verify backup and full restore
• When compiling taper static, also compiles bg_restore & bg_backup static
• Change make info to recreate info file in main menu
• Saving preferences done from another menu
• Removed test leading zeroes - not needed anymore
• fi.act_size reflects size of a soft link
• If checksum error for file, still restores the file (even though it may be corrupt)
• Couple of changes to make source strictly ANSI (including removing alloca function call)
• If reading multiple of block sizes, was reading an extra block that was not required
• After a message box option is selected, the selected option is printed in bold (poor man's hack of 3D push effect)
• If not compiled with triple buffering, doesn't print error/warning counts in restore

• Major backups in restore when using memory-tight version (introduced in 6.3 due to boundary code)
• Matched documentation and program on --sort-dirs option
• Bug in background restore/backup when triple buffering off
• Fixed a few cosmetic things with error handling
• Few bugs in non triple buffering code
• Few bugs with the memory tight version caused by boundary constraints
• Fixes up counts which were slightly off
• Bug if taper ran out of space on the very last block of the tape
• When doing a verify, was starting log file with `restore'
• Serious bug fix - occurred in some instances when gcc was not zeroing un-initialized variables
• Fixed static compiling problem
• Minor screen painting problem when prompting for new tapes

6.3.1

Release Date: 20-apr-96

• Nothing

• Prints a message to the log file if aborted backup

• Problem in preference file saving of x-tape and x-ntape
• In preference file handling, not properly handling preference filename on some occassions
• When changing preferences, some string fields were not correctly being changed

6.3.0

Release Date: 13-apr-96

NOTE My new address - yusuf@nagree.u-net.com

• Code added to support big endian machine. Taper writes all 32 bits as little endian to tape. Will convert this to big endian if required - set the appropriate Makefile option
• Pads strings in memory out to a multiple of 4 bytes - to help ensure that structures only occur on 4 byte boundaries. For porting to machines that require this
• time_t, uid_t, gid_t, dev_t are now hard coded - so that archives will be more compatible accross different architectures
• New option - --tape-size (-Z) allows you to specify the size of a tape (in megabytes). When taper reaches this, automatically assumes end of tape. For use with tape drives that have non-standard end of tape handling. If set to 0 or -1, then taper automatically handles end of tapes.
• Retry/Abort option if reading/writing to tape fails
• Full restore mode - if no info file found, asks whether the whole archive should be restored
• Verify option - does a byte by byte compare of the disk file and the tape file
• User allowed to abort when asking for new tape during backup - of course, archive will be invalid
• If backup gets killed (power failure, user kills), doing a mkinfo will attempt to recover the backup - if an illegal checksum is encountered, the user will be asked if this means the end of the backup (say yes if backup was killed)

• The double buffer is now a fixed size of 64K (hard coded) so it doesn't have to be constantly allocated/reallocated with changes in block size
• Also changed the buffer size to 32K for removable & regular files
• Added a ranlib command to compress lib - faster linking
• Hacked gzip code a bit further to accommodate older C libraries
• Changed reference in makefile from /usr/src/linux/include/linux to /usr/include/linux to accommodate those that have their linux source tree is a non-standard location
• You must specify tape type on command line (or preference file) - doesn't default to file type automatically
• Temporary files are given a name taper_xxxxx so that taper files can be easily identified
• Separate programs for background compress & restore. They are smaller than taper and use a lot less memory than taper. This should result in less overall memory requirements than the old way of forking of taper children
• If you have get_blksize option enabled, automatically enables set_blksize
• Better handling of read/write errors
• Better handling of end of tape conditions
• If problem opening new tape in multi-tape backups, doesn't abort, but reprompts
• Changed from signed --> unsigned to allow selections up to 4GB
• If mkinfo encounters an error, doesn't leave a half empty info file
• Errors while changing tapes are not counted as errors for the error count
• Internal error message if inconsistency with memory allocation
• Excludes the log file from the backup
• Added ENODATA as another possibility for end of tape

• Even if you had log level set to 0, some log messages were being written
• If a file grows while being backed up, does not cause backup integrity to be violated. Only the particular file won't be complete.
• Major problems if end of tape occurred on an exact block boundary
• Fixed the unattended backup option which got broken somehow and also added a few more messages into the mail message
• Bug with test_fastfsf and zftape causing seg faulting - basically, if zftape returns a block count of 1, assumes that this is not valid
• Not removing taper.8.gz in make uninstall
• Bug in color-selected preference
• Closes tape in check_tape now.
• Bug in preference file handling with tape specific options - clash between regular files and ftape
• Conflict between --tape-overwrite and --tape command line options therefore, --tape changed to --tape-name and --ntape changed to --ntape-name
• If could only write < 64 bytes to new tape in multi-tape backup, was seg faulting
• If only needed to write one block to a new tape in multiple tape backups, was not doing this, but discarding the block.
• For zftape driver, was getting in infinite loop if couldn't get tape header properly sometimes
• In mkinfo, was printing fatal error, when really wasn't a fatal error (on advancing to last volume). Didn't affect mkinfo - just a cosmetic problem with log file

6.2.0

Release Date: 16-jan-96

• Another compression method added - this is based on gzip - in fact, most of the code is ripped straight out of the gzip code. Advantage is that the whole file doesn't have to be read into memory for compression - hence lower memory usage - slight penalty on speed, of course.

• For compress 2, buffers are allocated at start of taper instead of continually allocating/deallocating
• Doesn't refer to longs and ints etc.. They are all typedefed. Now, when moving to another operating system, just have to change typedefs.
• Tightened up memory a bit more - frees memory as soon as it's not needed, rather than waiting to end of procedure
• Removed the LIBPATH=-L/usr/lib in the Makefile to avoid signal 11 errors in some distributions

• Major bug in internal compression routines for files > 32K
• Files not being closed in backup routines on certain errors
• Bug if archive only contained one file

6.1.2a

Release Date: 16-jan-96

• Nothing

• Mentioned that need at least gcc 2.6.1 to compile
• Can use home/end keys in the menu
• More logging with regard to forking of children
• Removed superflous reading error messages

• In restore, was printing info messages to log file even if log level set to errors only
• Problem if deleting exclude preferences with residual space
• Divide by zero error in backup if didn't backup any files
• Problem is only files selected for backup and not directories
• Problem with files not appearing in restore windows because of negative checksums

6.1.1

Release Date: 31-dec-95

• New utility checks to see if you have recursive links

• Now use the file info from the info file and not the tape when restoring. Thus, if there's a problem with the file info on tape, it can be overcome if you have an intact info file. Also, uses volume header from info file rather than tape.
• Use alloca for locally defined memory blocks. Less chance of memory leaks
• In backup, when erasing tape, writes a null header so that in future, tape is recognized as blank

• Saving taper.1 as taper.1 in man/cat8 therefore, man page not being found - changed taper.1 to taper.8
• Made checksums absolute value to avoid problems with wrap arounds
• Workaround to make it work with zftape 1.03
• Problem with the TRIPLE_BUFFERING system - SERIOUS bug since backup integrity could be affected
• Not closing tape device in test fast fsf

6.1.0

Release Date: 31-dec-95

• Can exclude directories from the backup using the --exclude-dirs (-R) options. It is case sensitive and recursive. Default is "/tmp /usr/tmp /var/tmp".
• Can limit the size of log files via new preference. If the log file is too big, the beginning of the log file is removed. Preferences is --limit-log-file num (-L) where num is the max number of megabytes (default 2) the log file should be.
• Makefile target to allow making of a statically linked taper for use in rescue disks
• New option in utilities menu - test make tape determines whether your tape drive requires the use of make tape

• Made Makefile slightly more efficient
• Made recursively sizing directories a bit quicker
• In backup/restore selection, file sizes are now in KB
• Removed the missed memory segment message in log - wasn't an error but was confusing too many people
• Man page in section 8 instead of section 1.
• Slight change in preference file handling to accommodate multiple preferences for different tape drivers. See the section Special preferences in the documentation for details
• Changed the default device names for zftape to qft0 & nqft0
• Changed the process_dir to a non-recursive routine - people were running out of stack space on large directories
• Use the process_dir routine in backup

• Divide by zero error when writing stats to log if took 0 seconds for backup/mkinfo
• Bug if the temporary file directory was mounted on a different device to the restore directory
• In mkinfo, closes the info file after use - should fix a lot of problems
• Mkinfo prints the title line correctly
• Ignores errors on tape_fsf in mkinfo - if it gets an error, assumes end of archive reached
• Mkinfo prints errors if unable to write to the info file
• Does a waitpid to prevent zombie children
• Invalid argument errors when doing a test_fastfsf
• In preference file, was always setting Y/N preferences to Y
• When saving preference to preference file, was ignoring any name other than ~/.taper_prefs
• Bug in the handling of long Y/N options
• Bug in deleting selected entries in backup
• Bug if specifying preference file on command line

6.0.0

Release Date: 17-dec-95

• The ancillary programs have been merged with the main taper program. Everything is accessed from the set of menus - where_proc, testfast_fsf, testzero etc.. are all in the utilities menu.
• The compile time settings for different tape drives have been changed to runtime options - you just start taper with the -T (--tape-type) option to use different tape drives. Alternatively, you can set it in your preference file or in the environment (TAPE_TYPE).
• You are now able to delete the last 'n' volumes on an archive. The files are permanently removed.
• Most of the Makefile options have gone and are replaced by run-time options.
• Colors can be set from command line - long names only
• Support for removable media including floppies
• At end of backup/restore/mkinfo, prints stats about backup and also writes to the log

• Changed the exit key from preference menu to ESC (was F10)
• Major change in header file structures/organization - mainly to make maintenance a bit easier
• Backup now checks to make sure that the archive you are appending agrees with the tape in the drive.
• Change in the info file format to accommodate remountable/floppy drives. Run mkinfo/check archive on all archives created prior to version 6.0 - you do NOT have to re-backup.
• Major change in the background write code. Now it only forks off one child - should help people who had problems with running out of processes and virtual memory in 5.6
• The long command line options (GNU style) and the preference file options are now the same. Most of the preference file options have changed name. You will have to rebuild any preference files you have.
• Lot of changes in code handling preferences. A lot easier to add preferences etc.. now
• If have an illegal preference, prints an error
• Two new variables, have_rewind, have_fsf - should allow easier addition of new backup devices
• If there's no tape in drive, will print an error message before it lets you select files for backup
• If can't fork for a write, the parent will try and write
• Another hack to overcome a problem in zftape - to do with block sizes when a new tape is inserted

• Problem in Makefile - not able to make taper.1 properly
• Plugged some shared memory leaks
• Exclude list was case sensitive
• Problems with children not closing the tape device so parent was getting device busy/resource busy errors
• A few bug fixes in the multiple tape code
• Bug in restore caused it to hang on certain occassions - cross use of _still_writing
• Error messages on setting links & permissions
• When printing archive directory to screen, was not printing volume selections correctly. Also printing negative volume numbers.
• Not printing archive differences with -A
• When changing preferences, if first line was a selection, was not printing the selected option in reverse

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	Author: Jolyon Forsyth
	Email: jolyon@multiline.com.au