[SuSE x86 Linux 8.2, 2.4.24 kernel]
I've just recently tried using rsync for mirroring a few files
(/var/spool/cron/tabs/*) from one machine to another. I'm curious
about what people use tar for versus rsync. Rsync seems to
have a lot of similar functionality. What kinds of things would
you use rsync in preference to tar, and vice versa?

--
George Young
gee arr why@ll.mit.edu
[three letter username]

George Young wrote:
> [SuSE x86 Linux 8.2, 2.4.24 kernel]
> I've just recently tried using rsync for mirroring a few files
> (/var/spool/cron/tabs/*) from one machine to another. I'm curious
> about what people use tar for versus rsync. Rsync seems to
> have a lot of similar functionality. What kinds of things would
> you use rsync in preference to tar, and vice versa?
>

Off the top... rsync is used to sync dirs/files... tar is
an archival format. You might rsync directories, and then
use tar to archive that directory. I'm not saying people
don't do some similar things with each... but the tools
are quite different in purpose (generally speaking).
Tar is probably not a good sync'ing tool.. and rsync
is probably not a good archival tool (again.. speaking
in general terms).