8.3.3 tar

Tar overcame some of the problems that cp had with symbolic links. However, although cpio handles special files, traditional tar doesn't.

tar's way of handling multiple hard links to a file places only one copy of the link on the tape, but the name attached to that copy is the only one you can use to retrieve the file; cpio's way puts one copy for every link, but you can retrieve it using any of the names.

The tar command changed its option for .bz2 files between Potato and Woody, so use --bzip2 in scripts instead of its short form -I (Potato) or -j (Woody).