how to back up onto several floppies?
 

Wanted to back some stuff onto several floppies, wanted it compressed. Got several problems.

Tried something like:
$ tar --create --multi-volume --bzip2 --file=archive.tar.bz2 --exclude-from=excludeFile.txt /home/lugo/Documents
Something roughly like that. It said something like 'cannot make multi volume archive if compressed'

So I tarred the stuff and compressed it and tried something like the above to put it onto floppies. It got weird and asked for the second volume instantly. The floppy was very weird afterwards. Giving odd results from df and stuff.

So how is it done?

(Incidentally got simmilar results of different computers with different versions of Debian.)

Thanks any help.

Try tar'ing it and then using split

You could also use cpio which automatically stops and waits for the next floppy.
For example:
The part where it wants you to change floppies and press enter may be abit confusing so, you can use a custom message...
You can also specify the compression type with --format=
For example: --format=crc

The extraction automatically waits for the next floppy....

After experimenting abit, it might be best to cd into the source directory first, like this...
Also, using the -d switch during extraction causes it to make directories when needed.

Vast thanks both. Had never heard of split, sounds useful, and didn't know what cpio did. Thanks.

For record:
$ split --size=1400k filename
splits the file into roughly floppy sized chunks called xaa, xab, etc..