This is afio 2.5.2

* WHAT IS AFIO, SHOULD I USE IT?

Afio makes cpio-format archives. It deals somewhat gracefully with
input data corruption, supports multi-volume archives during
interactive operation, and can make compressed archives that are much
safer than compressed tar or cpio archives. Afio is best used as an
`archive engine' in a backup script.

Afio is one of the oldest open source projects around, it started in
1985, but it is now in 'maintenance only' mode. If you have never used
afio as an archive engine, you should probably not start using it now.
If you are using it: afio is expected to be compatible UNIX time_t
extensions that will have to happen before the year 2038.

* WHAT IS NEW IN VERSION 2.5.2?

The main changes with respect to version 2.5.1 are:

- security improvements for the handling of archives from untrusted
  sources

- when making multivolume archives, added %V feature to include the
  volume number in subsequent volume file names

- various bug and portability fixes

* CONTACT INFORMATION

The GitHub repository

 https://github.com/kholtman/afio

is now the official home page of afio, you can check there to find out
if you have the latest version.

Note: there was some useful context information about afio on
the on the old (no longer supported) afio home page

  http://members.chello.nl/k.holtman/afio.html

that has not yet been copied to this GitHub repository, you can use

  https://web.archive.org/web/20160526001116/http://members.chello.nl/k.holtman/afio.html

to read the context information.

The current maintainer is Koen Holtman (koen.holtman@ieee.org).

(Alternative e-mail address for the maintainer: k.holtman@chello.nl)

You can post comments, questions, and proposed patches to for afio on
this Githubb page, but you can also mail the maintainer.  When mailing
the maintainer, please use the word `afio' somewhere in the subject
line, this lowers the chance that your mail will get accidentally
deleted.

Message from the current maintainer, written in 2018:

Afio is now in a 'maintenance only' mode, with several years between
formal releases.  'Maintenance only' means that I will be happy to
answer questions, to handle bug and problem reports, and to
incorporate patches that fix bugs, portabiliy problems, and security
issues.  However, it is very unlikely that I will work on adding major
new features, even if the feature request comes with a patch file
implementing the feature.

The main concern that drives my maintenance policy is to avoid
creating new bugs that would cause the backup process to silently
fail.  Because of this concern, I do a lot of manual reviewing and
testing for every patch I receive.  I have concluded that I simply do
not have the time (and interest level) anymore to do this for patches
adding new features.  My interest has declined because since about
2005, hard drives have become so cheap that making fault tolerant
compressed archive files for writing to tapes of floppy disks, as afio
can do, has become less and less relevant to the needs of average
Linux user.  I make my personal system backups using rsync on a
detachable hard drive.


>> See the first lines of afio.c for licensing/redistribution information <<

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Afio makes cpio-format archives.  It deals somewhat gracefully with
input data corruption.  Supports multi-volume archives during
interactive operation.  Afio can make compressed archives that are
much safer than compressed tar or cpio archives.  Afio is best used as
an `archive engine' in a backup script.

Since version 2.4.8beta1, afio supports files greater than 2 GB.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

See the file INSTALLATION for installation instructions.

See the file SCRIPTS for more information on backup scripts that use
afio.

See the file PORTING for information on compiling afio on non-Linux
machines.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

This afio version is based on a Linux port of afio 2.3.  Since the
original port, significant functionality has been added and some bugs
were removed.  While primarily intended for use under Linux, this code
should be portable to other UNIX versions.  As far as I know, there
has been no afio development beyond 2.3 outside the Linux community.
Thus, it should be safe to advertise ports of this code to other UNIX
versions as ports of afio version 2.4.1.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Afio has far too many options and features (some of which are not even
in the manual page).  Anything in afio that doesn't relate to reading
or writing an archive from/to a simple file or pipe or backing up and
restoring from floppies remains untested.

In particular, nobody has verified if the options -p -d -e -g -h -j -l
-m -u and -R and the special case archive name `!command' really do
what they claim to do.

Typical `tested' afio uses are
 ... | afio -o -v -s 1440k -F -Z /dev/fd0H1440
 afio -oZvx /tmp/pipe1 </tmp/pipe2
 afio -i -Z -k -v -x -n /tmp/pipe1
 ... | afio -s 512m -c 1024 -Z -T 20k -G 1 -E /backup/compressed -v -o \
       -L /backup/LOG -z /dev/tape 2>/dev/tty8 >/var/adm/backup

WARNING1: the code for -F (and -f and -K) is a complete mess.  It will
probably work in the normal case, but don't expect it to handle a
write/verify error correctly.  If you get such an error, best thing is
to restart afio completely.

WARNING2:The remote archive facilites (host:/file archive names) have
not been exhaustively tested. These facilities have seen a lot of
real-life use though.  However, there may be bugs in the code for
error handling and error reporting with remote archives.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------