The tar archive format and/or the command-line utility for working with tar files.
11
votes
3answers
2k views
How to choose directory name during untarring
Say I have file named ugly_name.tar, which when extracted, becomes ugly_name directory. What command can I use such that the resulting directory name is pretty_name instead?
2
votes
1answer
121 views
Issues while untaring tarball with acl
I am getting an error “Unknown file type 'A', extracted as normal file” while un-taring a set of files which has acl permissions set.
I had created the tar file in Solaris with tar -cpfv ...
3
votes
1answer
244 views
tar: exclude gzip file, and don't try to gunzip it
I would like to skip a large gzip file when I extract a tar file, but everytime tar starts to gunzip it to look inside it seems.
Even when I just try to peek inside tar seems to start gunzipping it, ...
4
votes
2answers
302 views
diff a gzipped tarball against a directory?
Is there a way I can diff a gzipped tarball against an existing directory?
I would like to be able to do it without extracting the data from the tarball.
3
votes
1answer
217 views
“tar --exclude-backups” does not exclude files with tilde at end
If I have the following directory:
$ ls -a foo
. .. a #a# a~ b b.bkp c .git .hg .svn
and call:
$ tar zcf foo-no-bkp.tar.gz --exclude-backups foo/
The resulting archive still has backup ...
6
votes
5answers
915 views
force copying a corrupted home directory
I have a home directory in a disk that has a lot of corrupted files. I am trying to save most files as possible. I am trying to create a backup of my home directory on an external drive using
tar ...
3
votes
1answer
170 views
Extract directory from wget's stdout
I am trying to wget a tarball from github.com and, without creating a temporary file, extract a subdirectory from it:
wget -qO- https://github.com/django-nonrel/django-nonrel/tarball/develop | tar ...
7
votes
4answers
2k views
Rename directory inside of a tar archive
Is it possible to rename a directory inside of a tar archive? My use case is that I have an externally provided RPM spec file that assumes a tarball with a certain directory structure, and I have an ...
2
votes
1answer
373 views
Extracting / Installing a TAR file
When I extract a tar file using this command: tar xvzf gcc-4.7.1.tar.gz
(This is the directory the tar file is in:
cd /u/test/GCC-4.7.1/)
The files were extracted but they are in /dev/... (see below ...
1
vote
1answer
249 views
Recover corrupted .tar salvaged from Android
I had an android phone that developed a fault in which it only persistently showed the boot logo. I sent it for Samsung for repair, who send it to a third-party company to be repaired. I was told that ...
3
votes
2answers
4k views
How to copy between two remote hosts using tar piped into scp from remote server when behind a firewall?
I'd like to transfer a directory between two servers, but compress the directory on the remote host before transfer, and then uncompress to another host. I'm sure it's possible to pipe everything all ...
4
votes
1answer
263 views
Find recursively all archive files of diverse archive formats and search them for file name patterns
At best I would like to have a call like this:
$searchtool /path/to/search/ -contained-file-name "*vacation*jpg"
... so that this tool
does a recursive scan of the given path
takes all files with ...
9
votes
3answers
4k views
How to XZ a directory with TAR using maximum compression?
So I need to compress a directory with max compression.
How can I do it with xz? I mean I will need tar too because I can't compress a directory with only xz. Is there a oneliner to produce e.g. ...
8
votes
2answers
490 views
Dereferencing hard links
In the manual page of tar command, an option for following hard links is listed.
-h, --dereference
follow symlinks; archive and dump the files they point to
--hard-dereference
follow ...
0
votes
3answers
202 views
Zip file using tar on linux server
I'm trying to make a zip file out of some files but when I extract the zip I only get 1 file.
tar cfvz test.zip file1.mp3 file2.mp3 file3.jpg
And after I extract test.zip I only get a "test" ...
2
votes
2answers
182 views
I want to tar X directory not including its parents
tar cvf /var/lib/backup/sample.tar /home/user/.project
However, when I extract, I get its parents as well
/backup/
- /home/
- /user/
- .project/
This tar commands does it job ...
5
votes
4answers
1k views
Preventing tar from using too much CPU and disk (old laptop crashes if 100%)
I want to backup 1 terabyte of data to an external disk.
I am using this command: tar cf /media/MYDISK/backup.tar mydata
PROBLEM: My poor laptop freezes and crashes whenever I use 100% CPU or 100% ...
4
votes
3answers
925 views
Why does tar --exclude=“.*” create an empty archive?
Everything I read says that to exclude .svn and .htaccess and other hidden files when creating a tar archive, use the --exclude=".*" pattern.
When I try, I get an empty archive. When I leave out the ...
1
vote
1answer
149 views
rpm and deb fileformat are blocked by my ISP. How to install software?
I have a very peculiar problem, Just be patient with what I am saying and then see what all suggestion you can give me.
I have situation where my ISP has blocked .rpm and .deb files to be downloaded. ...
4
votes
2answers
1k views
If I change permissions on a tar file, will that apply to the files inside it?
I have a script that runs regularly via cron, that creates a tar.gz file for the purpose of backing up a directory.
For reasons beyond my control, the only user who can execute the script via cron is ...
5
votes
1answer
1k views
How to check/test .tar.bz archives?
I've been using tar with its "--use-compress-prog=pbzip2" function to archive my files then compress them with pbzip2 to get an "*.tar.bz" archive.
Afterwards I checked the resulting file with ...
2
votes
2answers
206 views
Untar directory from large tarball
How do I untar a directory that I don't know the path to? I only know the directory name.
I know how to untar a single file with a wildcard: tar -xf somefile.tar.gz --wildcards --no-anchored ...
3
votes
3answers
145 views
Indexed archive format?
I need to create compressed archives of files, and be able to quickly extract individual files/directories from them.
The problem is, for example, tar.bz2 seems to be not the best choice for such ...
4
votes
5answers
3k views
tar files only, no directories
I can probably write a shell script to find files only, then pass the list to tar, but I am wondering whether there already is a built-in feature in tar that allows doing just that, in a single ...
9
votes
4answers
4k views
Create tar archive of a directory, except for hidden files?
Here's a newb question. I'm wanting to create a tar archive of a specific directory (with its subdirectories of course). But when I do it, using the tar command, I get a list of files that were ...
4
votes
2answers
731 views
Why doesn't tar ask before overwriting existing files?
I lost a couple hundred lines of a Vim plugin I wrote and continue back up every so often because I extracted a tar file containing an older version. I decided not to use source control management ...
6
votes
1answer
5k views
How do you extract a single folder from a large tar.gz archive?
I am using this command on a 5GB archive
tar -zxvf archive.tar.gz /folder/in/archive
is this the correct way to do this? It seems to be taking forever with no command line output...
3
votes
1answer
294 views
HP-UX 9: Backup filesystem using tar
So I've got an HP-UX 9 box that I'm trying to backup, first to a tape with fbackup, to no avail, and now to a folder shared over NFS. I'm using the command "tar -cvf /nfs/Results/backup.tar /" where ...
3
votes
2answers
2k views
find a file within a tar.gz archive
Is it possible to use the find command so that it searches the files within a tar.gz archive also using wildcards?
like
find archive.tar.gz --name *foo*
4
votes
2answers
495 views
Using files that have spaces in their name in pipes
I have folder named play which contains a file damn file (with space). When I use find and pipe the output to tar:
find play/ -name 'damn*' | tar cf archive.tar -T -
It works perfectly. Why does ...
12
votes
5answers
14k views
tar --exclude doesn't exclude. Why?
I have this very simple line in a bash script which executes successfully (i.e. producing the _data.tar file), except that it doesn't exclude the sub-directories it is told exclude via the --exclude ...
2
votes
2answers
187 views
Create release version using tar
I have a project with the usual stuff (source code, yadda, yadda) and I want to have a command to Scons (but it could be whatever build system to be honest) that will do the following:
Build the ...
3
votes
5answers
391 views
How do I extract all .htaccess files from a tarball?
I want to extract all .htaccess files from a tarball, how can I do so? I see only one mention of "include" in the manual page of tar which is not related with an option for including only certain ...
3
votes
2answers
804 views
Tar overwrites read only files
I created directory test, created file 1.txt in test, wrote 'Before' in this file.
Then I went
cd ..
and used the command:
tar -cvzf ./test.tgz ./test
Then I entered the test dir again. Opened ...
1
vote
1answer
252 views
Using tar on a file with an @ (at symbol)
I'm trying to extract a tarball using tar -xvf that's in the format (where * is any word character) *@*@*@*.tar.gz but I think tar is trying to find the file at a remote location. The error I get is ...
3
votes
2answers
2k views
How to create backup from symbolic links?
I have a directory with symbolic links to other directories. I want to archive the symbolic links, not as links but as archives containing the files of directories they refer to, using tar command. ...
0
votes
0answers
45 views
Backing up to DVD [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Splitting large directory tree into specified-size chunks?
I have a partition that is about 14G and I need to back it up to DVD in such a way that I can use each disc to ...
5
votes
1answer
900 views
Cannot open: Input/output error with tar command in a shell script
I am trying to create a tar ball in a shell script (I have enabled set -x), but I get an error:
+ cd /home5/mysite/public_html
+ TAR_DUMP=gypo_2012-02-18-03:51:15.tar.gz
+ echo 'Tar name: ...
3
votes
1answer
1k views
Will tar -cvzf packed.tar.gz mydir take hidden files into account?
I need to create a tarball of a given directory. However, I need to make sure hidden files are included too (such as those beginning with .).
Will the following command automatically take the hidden ...
4
votes
4answers
182 views
Generating sets of files that fit on a given media size for tar -T
Can anyone suggest a script that will take as input the name of one or more directories and a media size, and output lists of files for input to tar using -T (assuming no compression)?
...
5
votes
3answers
403 views
Look at the tar log contents without extracting them
tar -tvf file.tar contains log files.
Is there anyway to do something like this
tar -tvf file.tar | head -1 | awk '{print $NF}' | xargs less {}
This would give file not found, but is there a way?
...
4
votes
4answers
367 views
How can I move the entire OS to a different server?
I want to install RhodeCode on a test server at work. However, the internet access is restricted for that server, and RhodeCode has a lot of dependencies (I don't even have Python on that server). So ...
15
votes
2answers
4k views
tar cvf or tar -cvf ?
I have learned to use tar without '-' for options, like tar cvfz dir.tar.gz Directory/ but I recently came accross the slightly different tar -czvf syntax (I think the 'f' must be the last option in ...
8
votes
2answers
1k views
How to create a tar.gz file from a folder excluding a folder
How do I exclude a file or folder while creating a tar.gz file with tar command?
4
votes
3answers
923 views
How store in a variable a file list that includes the backslash when needed?
Main question:
I am writing a script to perform a backup. I make a list of files in the following way:
LISTOFFILES=$(find ~ \( -name '*.[pP][dD][fF]' -o -name '*.[oO][dD][tT]' \))
The variable ...
10
votes
2answers
544 views
Tar up all PDFs in a directory, retaining directory structure
I'm trying to create a compressed tarball that contains all PDF files that exist in one of my directories. The directory structure needs to be retained. Empty directories are not needed, but I really ...
2
votes
2answers
402 views
I need to transfer a very large folder over FTP, without creating a file first
I am running an Amazon EC2 instance that is limited in disk space. I have a very large folder that I need to FTP to my local machine, preferably without creating an intermediate tar file, since there ...
1
vote
1answer
523 views
Updating tar.gz daily only with changed files [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Add/update a file to an existing tar.gz archive?
I have some game files I wish to update daily and they create a tar.gz of the folder, but instead of making a full ...
1
vote
1answer
496 views
Create target directory when extracting tarball
Is it possible to create a target directory, similar in nature to the mkdir -p switch, where I can define a non-existent target directory within my tar command, and tar will create the directory for ...
1
vote
3answers
908 views
Use find and tar together
I have a directory with many log files, with filenames like acct.20111001 up to acct.20111030. I want to zip them by running:
tar -cvjf acct.20111001.bz2 acct.20111001
How can I use find to ...
