dar 2.4.0 in pre-release phase

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Hi,

Time has come for a new major release to take place. In a few weeks,
pre-release phase for version 2.4.0 will end and give place to a new
major release, until that time you can already test its source code and
windows binary at:

	http://dar.linux.free.fr/pre-release

The pre-release phase has started quite in secret at the beginning of
this year and has received a growing number of visitors as time passed.
Today after seven revisions, the code is found stable enough to increase
even more the pre-release audience.

You are thus welcome to try it, test its compilation process under your
environment, playing with its new and old features... and report any
problem to the the dar-support mailing-list or better to the pre-release
mailing-list at:

	https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dar-pre-release

Here follows the list of new features brought by 2.4.0.

Best Regards,
Denis Corbin.

- -----

Changes from 2.3.x to 2.4.0:
- - hard links support for pipes, soft links, char and block devices has
been added (so far, only hard links on plain files were supported)
- - added rich overwriting feature for merging archives (-/ option)
- - changed default behavior of dar: it no more tries to preserve the
atime of read files, which had as side effect to modify the ctime. See
man page for -aa and -ac options for details
- - simplified the use of the "sed" command in Makefiles.am files
- - integrated Wiebe Cazemier's patch for man page
- - -E option has been extended to work also when generating a single
sliced archive (no need to have -s option to be able to use -E option)
- - slice header has been extended to store additional information (slice
  layout is now redundant in each each slice and may be used as backup
from a slice to another in case of corruption).
- - dar does no more need to read the first then the last slice of an
archive to get its contents, it now instead only needs the last slice.
- - an isolated catalogue can now be used as backup of the original
archive's internal catalogue (-A option in conjunction with -x option
for example)
- - added directory look-up optimization (adaptation of Erik Wasser's patch)
- - added -e option support (aka dry-run) to archive testing
- - added the possibility to set permission and ownership of generated
slices
- - re-designed the libdar API to have all optional parameters carried by
class object in a single argument, the aim to not break backward
compatibility of the API upon each new feature addition. The libdar_4_4
namespace can be used for backward compatibility with older applications
(see API documentation)
- - added retry on change feature (-_ option).
- - changed storage for UID and GID from U_16 to infinint to support
arbitrarily larger UID and GID
- - added lzo compression support
- - dar_manager now uses an anonymous pipe to send configuration to dar,
this solves the problem due to command-line limitation.
- - dar now stores a "removal date" when a file disappeared since the
archive of reference was done (so far only the information that a file
was removed was stored). This is needed for dar_manager (see next new
feature)
- - dar_manager can now better restore the status of a set of files
exactly as it was at any given time from a set of full and differential
backups. In particular, it does no more restore files that were removed
at the requested date.
- - added check in dar_manager to detect conditions where a file has a
modification date that has been set to the past. Two objectives are at
the root of this feature: proper restoration of files and detection of
possible rootkit
- - added mode for restoration that avoid restoring directory tree which
do not contain any saved files (in particular when restoring a
differential backup) see man page for -D option for more details.
- - reviewed implementation of code managing Extended Attributes (much
faster now)
- - added batch feature (-@ option) to dar_manager
- - added Furtive Read Mode support (O_NOATIME + fdopendir): when the
system supports it, while reading data, dar does not modify any date
(ctime or atime)
- - added the possibility to have sequential reading of archives (ala tar)
see option --sequential-read
- - added the possibility to read from a pipe (single pipe, without
dar_slave) (use '-' as filename in conjunction with --sequential-read)
- - added -P -g -[ and -] options to archive listing (-l option)
- - added sparse file detection mechanism (can save and restore sparse
files)
- - added dirty flag in archive for file that changed while being saved.
By default a warning is issued when the user is about to restore a dirty
file, this can be changed thanks to the --dirty-behavior option
- - -R option can receive an arbitrary string (still is excepted an empty
string) In particular dar will no more complain if the given path
contains // or \\ however it must in a way or another point to something
that exists!
- - added a short listing feature (listing only the summary), (using both
- -l and -q options)
- - extended conditional statements in included files (DCF) with user
defined targets (see user target paragraph at the end of dar man page)
User targets let the user add a set of options using a single keyword on
command-line.
- - a sample /etc/darrc is now proposed with some user targets for common
operation like compression without compressing already compressed files.
- - dar now releases filedescriptors of archive of reference(s) before
proceeding to the operation (differential backup, archive isolation, etc.)
- - user can add a comment in archive header some macro are provided for
common options (see --user-comment in man page). This comment can be
seen when listing an archive in verbose mode (-l -v) or when displaying
the archive's summary (-l -v -q).
- - added a "security warning" feature if ctime has changed in filesystem
while inode has not changed at all (-asecu disables this feature). This
is to target possible rootkit files. Note that this may toggle false
positive, if for example you change EA of a file.
- - added feature: DAR_DUC_PATH environment variable, which let dar look
for a DUC file (see -E and -F options) in the given path.
- - added feature: DAR_DCF_PATH environment variable, same as previously
but for DCF files (see -B option).
- - added two targets for conditional syntax: "reference:" and "auxiliary:"
- - weak blowfish implementation has been removed (no backward
compatibility as it suffered of a weak Initial Vector (IV)
initialization), but the normal blowfish encryption stays in place.
- - Due to openssh licensing, replaced openssh by libgcrypt dependancy
(which stays optional).
- - added new cyphers aes256, twofish256, serpent256 and camellia256
- - added the hash feature (--hash option), supporting md5 and sha1
algorithms. The hash is calculated on the fly for each slice, before its
data is even written to disk. This let one to check for media corruption
even before a multi-sliced archive is finished. However this does not
prevent an archive to be corrupted due to a software bug (in dar, libdar
or in a external library), so it is always recommended to test the
archive using dar's -t option.
- - -G option (on-fly isolation) has been replaced by -@ when creating an
archive, to reduce the number of letter used for options. This also let
available the usual switches associated to -@ option to define an
encryption algorithm and passphrase for the on-fly isolated catalogue.
- - slices number may be padded with zeros (--min-digits option) Note that
if using this option when creating an archive, this same option is
required for any operation on this archive
- - added -konly feature to only remove files recorded as suppressed at
  differential backup restoration time.
- - dar and libdar now store keys in secure memory (with the exception
that a DCF is parsed in unlocked memory, having a key in a DCF file is
not as secure as having dar asking for password at execution time using
the "-K :" syntax)
- - added hook for backup: a user command or script can be run before
saving and after backing up files that match a given mask all along the
backup process (see -<, -> and -= options).
- - added feature: -alist-ea let the user see the Extended Attributes of
files while listing an archive contents.
- - dar_manager can receive negative numbers to point to archive counting
by the end of the database.
- - dar and libdar stay released under GPL 2.1 (not under GPL 3, and not
lesser GPL, neither)
- - setting the "little/big endian" to usual meaning (it was inverted in
the code), this does not change the dar's behavior nor its compatibility
with different systems or older libdar versions.
- - added -ai option to avoid warning for unknown inodes types
- - added support for Solaris's Door files

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