[kwlug-disc] So why not tar -cf tarball.tar a.xz b.xz c.xz, instead of tar -cJf tarball.tar.xz a b c ?

[B.S.]

On 10/21/2016 05:31 PM, William Park via kwlug-disc wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 21, 2016 at 02:05:37PM -0400, B.S. wrote:
>> In any case, it isn't a reason / doesn't explain why tar'ring gzip's (to
>> gain confidence of individual file integrity) isn't more prevalent.
>
> How would you improve
>      tar -cf - /

Did you really mean to tar all your filesystems to stdout, there?

> ?

The question is: With a damaged tar file, and the day -will- come, how 
do you know which files within what remains are good and which ones are 
damaged? (It's unlikely to be all of them.)

- if the files are all compressed beforehand (e.g. gzip), the act of 
trying to uncompress each actually damaged file will throw an error, and 
you'll know.

The OP essentially observed that this is somewhat obvious, yet not 
prevalent in googling - why not?