VMSTAR

Current version: 3.3-8

VMSTAR is a TAR reader/writer for VMS. It can read archives ("tarfiles") created by the Un*x command "tar" and also create such archives. Tarfiles can be disk files or directly on tape.

Features include:

• both VMS-style and UNIX-style command lines.
• user decision on conversion of dots in directory names to underscores.
• user-specified daytime stamping of restored files.

Where to find the latest version

The latest version of VMSTAR can always be found on the WKU FTP archives. See their page for further instructions.

You can find beta versions on http://dist.lp.se/historical/VMS/

TODO

Future work that will be done:

1. Full Posix (ANSI/IEEE 1003.1) compliance, allowing pathnames that are up to approximately 255 bytes long.
   To be done in the near future

Misc.

Y2K compliance: I made a test today (1999-03-19) consisting of the following:

1. Create a couple of files in Solaris, and give them the timestamps 2000-01-01 00:00 and 2001-01-01 00:00, and create a tarball that contains them.
2. Copy that tarball to VMS, using FTP.
3. Untar the tarball with VMSTAR, and check that the timestamps are correct (they are currently NOT equal, unless you do this in England, since Unix tar stores UTC time instead of local time, while VMSTAR currently doesn't know UTC).
4. Make a new tarball, using VMSTAR.
5. Copy the new tarball to Unix, using FTP.
6. Untar the new tarball on Unix, in a different directory, and check that teh original files and the ones passed back and forth have the same timestamps.

This test went through successfully.

If anyone has ideas for other, better tests, please drop me a message.