On: FSArchiver – Filesystem Archiver for Linux

[loeg]

Seems like tar, with internal checksums (instead of external checksums or FEC). I'd just stick with tar and add some par2 blocks if you are worried about bitrot.

[woleium → loeg]

the third line of the site says:

Unlike tar/dar, FSArchiver also creates the file-system when it extracts the data to partitions

[loeg → woleium]

That isn't something I've ever wanted from tar. But if I did, newfs is easy to use.

[naniwaduni → loeg]

Even if you're going to layer par2 over an archive, I wouldn't want the underlying archive format to be tar.

[CaliforniaKarl → loeg]

Interesting! Can you please point to an example?

[mbreese → CaliforniaKarl]

Here's the first example I could find.

https://pthree.org/2014/04/01/protect-against-bit-rot-with-p...

Basically, you take a normal TAR file and creates external parity files that can be used to recover data in the case of bitrot. Something like this would have been great to have on a few data files I had to retrieve from tape that ended up with a bit flip somewhere in the network > disk > tape > disk process.

However, it doesn't look like the program is maintained anymore...

http://parchive.sourceforge.net/

> DISCLAIMER: This project web space is not actively mantained and is presented here for archive purposes. However some project members still montior the project mailings lists if you have questions. (sic)

The last release was in 2004 (Wikipedia says it was active until 2015, but I don't see that).

[notpeter → mbreese]

Parchive development has moved GitHub.

PAR2 (libpar2/par2cmdline) continues to see active (if sporadic) maintenance. The most recent tagged release was 2020-02-09 but there've been a handful of PR's merged since. [2]

PAR3 has a reference implementation and alpha spec (libpar3/par3cmdline) which is based around Blake3. [3]

OG PAR (libpar/parcmdline) is legit unmaintained; the last release was 21 years ago. [1]

[2]: https://github.com/Parchive/par2cmdline

[3]: https://github.com/Parchive/par3cmdline

[1]: https://github.com/Parchive/parcmdline/

[mbreese → notpeter]

Thanks for the update -- it was hard to find any information on the program.

And I guess, more importantly, your first link (well, [2]), is also the source used for at least the Debian package, so it's at least more up to date!

[pessimizer → mbreese]

Seems easier and safer to use fsarchiver.

[loeg → pessimizer]

fsarchiver doesn't do FEC; it can only detect corruption, not fix it.

[kevin_thibedeau → mbreese]

Feature complete tools don't need updates.

[pessimizer → loeg]

> I'd just stick with tar

Why?

[loeg → pessimizer]

Because it works?

[Nasreddin_Hodja → loeg]

Fsarchiver works better for me. With tar I have to manually specify a lot to exclude when making full filesystem backups, at least submountpoints. With fsarchiver you don't have to.