Major changes in taper 6.9
--------------------------

*  Major change in info structure resulting in smaller and quicker 
   info files
   
*  Fixes a problem with incremental backups

*  Fixes seg faulting under Red Hat 5.2 and kernel 2.2.x

*  Fixes a problem with unattended backups



Major changes in taper 6.8.1
----------------------------

*  Ability to select which files to exclude from the backup

*  Major performance improvements

*  Screen only updates once every second rather than for
   every file - speeds up taper

*  Support for tape drives that don't handle end of tape
   condition properly

*  Supports glibc (aka lib6)

*  Attempt recovery module within utils for corrupt archives

*  Able to use networked drives like tar (eg. myhost.com:/dev/tape)

*  When processing info file for restore, only processes once so
   much quicker plus pre-processes most recent restore so faster
   during restore selections

*  Uses m-tree indexed info files so that the info data is not stored
   in memory, hence system load and memory usage has plummetted.
   Results in four info files per archive - base, data and two index
   files. The index files do not need to be saved since they
   can be regenerated with a new utility - reindex info file

*  New option - --size-dirs : allows you turn of sizing of directories
   while selecting files for backup

*  New option - --unattended-id : when doing an unattended backup,
   allows you to specify which archive to add a backup to. If that
   tape is not in the drive, the backup is aborted.

*  Get file details in backup & restore windows

*  Able to search archive for a particular file

*  Able to search disk directory for a particular file

*  Able to jump to a particular directory in backup or restore

*  Long filenames are handled better - like midnight commander

*  Few changes to user interface for more consistency : see changes file
   for details

*  Few bug fixes including in auto-detecting end of tape



Major changes in taper 6.7.4
----------------------------

*  Handling seeking on drives that number blocks from 1, rather than 0
   Common symptom was taper reporting drive couldn't seek when it
   actually could

*  New preference : min-before-seek : specifies minimum number of 
   blocks the tape needs to be advanced before taper will issue
   a seek command. Otherwise, continues streaming

*  Can select root directory in backup

*  Problems with multiple tape handling fixed

*  Can browse archives without having a tape in the tape drive

*  Use of pipes in co-ordinating children with triple buffering:
   should help system load

*  Loads of minor changes and bug fixes



Major changes in taper 6.7
--------------------------

*  New option - --old-archive which allows you to use archives created
   by taper versions 5.0 --> 5.6 with 6.7 
   
*  New option - --min-free which specifies how much free space should
   be on filesystem before background compress is attempted
   
*  Error messages printed in background children cannot start

*  Fixes to allow taper to be used with C libraries 5.3.x

*  Default mailing program changed from deliver to mail

*  Few bug fixes including : not always removing all temporary files,
   background children not using temp directory properly,
   unattended backup problem, multi-volume single directory restores 
   

Major changes in taper 6.6
--------------------------

*  New option --tmp-dir specifies where temporary files should be
   stored

*  New option --one-file-system tells taper to not descend directories
   that are on other filesystems

*  Few more issues for porting

*  Bug fix for device busy errors and few other minor bug fixes


Major changes in taper 6.5
--------------------------
*  Added support for compression of info files - on by default. 
   Change in backup preferences
   
*  Code is now strictly ANSI compliant

*  Removed leading `.' from all taper files - ie. .taper_prefs -->
   taper_prefs, .taper_info --> taper_info, .taper_log --> taper_log
   
*  Info file is now in little endian format so it should be
   portable accross different architectures

*  If segfaults, cleans up memory before exiting if possible   
   

Major changes in taper 6.4
--------------------------

*  Restore is much more intelligent now and uses the seek 
   ioctl where available. This should speed up restoration
   a lot especially where you are only restoring a few files
   (relative to the number on the archive) that are scattered
   on the archive
   
*  Restore will prompt for the tape on which the first file it
   needs to restore is on, rather than the tape on which the
   archive was commenced

*  Lots of bug fixes related to the memory tight option



Major changes in taper 6.3
--------------------------

*  Added new preference, --tape-size for telling taper the size of
   your tape drive. Value of 0 tells taper to auto-detect end of tape

*  Full restore mode that doesn't need an info file

*  Verify mode to do a byte by byte compare of tape file & disk files

*  Uses two ancillary programs to avoid forking off taper children - better
   memory usage
   
*  Retry/Abort option if error reading/writing to tape

*  Fixed the unattended backup mode (I hope)

*  Support for big endian machines and machine independant
   archives
   
*  Support for 4 byte boundary structures   

*  Change in preference file/command line options:
      --tape    -->    --tape-name
      --ntape   -->    --ntape-name

*  Attempt at recovery if backup was killed by power failure (or kill)

*  Lots of little bug fixes and little improvements
 

Major changes in taper 6.2
--------------------------

*  A new compression methods added - an internal gzip type

*  Original internal compression routine made much more memory
   efficient

*  Utility to check for recursive links
 
*  Major backup bug corrected with files > 32K being compressed -
   spurious bug and also with buffers being flushed to drive in the
   wrong order (rare bug)



Major changes in Taper 6.1
--------------------------

*  The ability to automatically exclude directories in the backup
   (eg. /tmp and /usr/tmp)

*  New utility to test if your tape drive needs tapes to be
   prepared with Make tape before use
 
*  Limit the size the log file can grow to

*  Lot of bug fixes, including one major one where files were
   disappearing after running mkinfo/check archive


Major changes in Taper 6.0
--------------------------

*  All the ancillary programs have been merged into the main
   taper menu under utilities

*  Can erase the last 'n' volumes of an archive

*  Makefile options replaced by command line - don't need separate
   tapers for SCSI, zftape and ftape. Similarly, don't need separate
   memory tight and normal versions

*  Preference file and command line preferences have the same name
   (the names of some preference file options have changed)

*  Support for removable media such as floppy drives and ZIP drives

*  Change in the background write processing. Help people who
   had limited memory and were getting virtual memory exhaustion
   and/or running out of processes
   
*  There has been a change in the info file format. This doesn't
   affect your archives, just the info files. You must run mkinfo/check
   archive on all archives run prior to version 6.0 to update
   the info file

*  Problem zftape users were getting with Unknown tape errors has
   been fixed

*  Multitude of minor changes and bug fixes
 

Major changes in Taper 5.6
--------------------------

*  New, very efficient, triple buffering process for backups.

*  An internal compression routine. This is not as efficient as
   gzip, but much much faster. You can still opt to use
   gzip via the compress-type (COMPRESS_TYPE) option

*  The buffering, combined with internal compression produces 
   a very much improved performance on backups

*  Uncompressing of files in restore is done in the background
   so restore performance is also much better

*  Backups can be cleanly interrupted without affecting archive
   integrity. Press Q or q while backing up.


Major changes in Taper 5.5
--------------------------

*  Support for latest version of zftape - v1.02 including using
   the new GET_BLKSIZE ioctl. This means that you don't have to
   worry about what block size an archive was made with - taper
   automatically works it out. Also overcomes some problems
   with the interaction between taper and zftape-1.02 

*  You can unselect a file from the top left windows in backup
   and restore by pressing 'u'. You can still unselect from the
   file selection window as well

*  Couple of minor bug fixes



Major changes in Taper 5.4
--------------------------

*  Support for the new zftape driver added - improved version
   of the ftape driver.

*  Support for quick fast forwards for tape drives that support
   it (zftape, and most SCSIs)

*  Absolute fixed block writing & reading to the tape

*  Unattended backups 

*  Couple of minor bugs fixed



Major changes in Taper 5.3
--------------------------

*  New option (--archive-diff) allows you to print the files
   that have changed since an archive was made.

*  You can now select files for backup and restore from the
   top right window (what's currently on the archive window)


Major changes in Taper 5.2
--------------------------

*  When backing up using compression, now sets up a background 
   process to compress files, resulting in faster throughput to
   tape.
   
*  Much faster at calculating directory sizes

*  Much faster handling of most recent restore option. The downside
   is that the most recent file is assumed to be on the most recent
   volume. This is the case 99.999% of the time, but very rarely,
   for some reason, an old version of a file may be on a later
   volume. If this is the case, taper won't pick it up - you'll have
   to do it manually.

*  Linuxdoc-sgml is used for documentation so that a postscript,
   info, tex or html doc file can be generated. A plain ASCII text
   file (as well as SGML source file) is supplied so that people
   without the linuxdoc-sgml package can still have some 
   documentation.

*  An option in the Makefile allows you to compile either a fast
   but memory & resource hungry taper, or a slower but much less
   of a memory demanding program.
   
*  Less allocation and reallocation of memory blocks resulting in
   improved performance and reduced system load

*  Will create the file set directory if it doesn't exist

*  When doing a restore on a particular volume, will not show
   empty directories but descend straight to a directory
   that has entries in it. Can be over-ridden with a new 
   option (--auto-descend)
   
*  Major backup bug corrected.

*  You can print the directory of any archive, not just the archive
   of the tape currently in the tape drive

*  Major restore bug fixed with regard to missing volumes

*  In restore, when selecting a directory, will calculate the directory
   size taking into account most recent restore.
   
*  The usual bug fixes & minor changes (see CHANGES file for details)


Major changes in Taper 5.1
--------------------------

*  You now need ncurses v1.9.6 with the forms library

*  File sets now supported

*  New options --exclude-files - excludes a particular class
   of files from the backup (eg. .o files)

*  New option --exclude-compress stops compression on certain 
   types of files (eg. .gz, .Z .gif)

*  Man page

*  Able to give volume and archive title just prior to backup
   rather than having to specify on command line

*  The usual bug fixes & minor changes (see CHANGES file for details)


Major changes in Taper 5.0
--------------------------

*  Information stored about each volume - when it was backed up, 
   what was backed up etc..

*  Support for incremental backups totally overhauled

*  More intelligent restore - if multiple copies of the same
   file are on an archive, taper will automatically restore 
   only the most recent file (can be overriden)

*  Able to restore directories & devices without the tape -
   information from info file is used

*  Preferences can be changed within the program and then saved
   to a preference file or to a shell command line

*  One program only instead of three - menu selection for the
   appropriate program

*  Able to see all the archives made regardless of whether
   the particular tape is in the drive 

*  Lots of other changes and bug fixes (see CHANGES file for
   details)



$Id: MAJOR_CHANGES,v 1.11 2000/10/20 01:40:34 yusuf Exp $