Questions tagged [tar]
The tar archive format and/or the command-line utility for working with tar files.
1,172
questions
376
votes
2
answers
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Compress a folder with tar?
I'm trying to compress a folder (/var/www/) to ~/www_backups/$time.tar where $time is the current date.
This is what I have:
cd /var/www && sudo tar -czf ~/www_backups $time"
I am ...
195
votes
6
answers
349k
views
How to extract specific file(s) from tar.gz
How can we extract specific files from a large tar.gz file? I found the process of extracting files from a tar in this question but, when I tried the mentioned command there, I got the error:
$ tar --...
190
votes
9
answers
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tar: Removing leading `/' from member names
root@server # tar fcz bkup.tar.gz /home/foo/
tar: Removing leading `/' from member names
How can I solve this problem and keep the / on file names ?
190
votes
1
answer
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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...
185
votes
5
answers
142k
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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?
146
votes
13
answers
150k
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. foo....
109
votes
7
answers
151k
views
Create a tar archive split into blocks of a maximum size
I need to backup a fairly large directory, but I am limited by the size of individual files. I'd like to essentially create a tar.(gz|bz2) archive which is split into 200MB maximum archives. ...
104
votes
8
answers
21k
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Why would I tar a single file?
At my company, we download a local development database snapshot as a db.dump.tar.gz file. The compression makes sense, but the tarball only contains a single file (db.dump).
Is there any point to ...
104
votes
14
answers
270k
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 ...
102
votes
6
answers
262k
views
How to add/update a file to an existing tar.gz archive?
Is there a way to add/update a file in a tar.gz archive? Basically, I have an archive which contains a file at /data/data/com.myapp.backup/./files/settings.txt and I'd like to pull that file from the ...
101
votes
5
answers
108k
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How to download an archive and extract it without saving the archive to disk?
I'd like to download, and extract an archive under a given directory. Here is how I've been doing it so far:
wget http://downloads.mysql.com/source/dbt2-0.37.50.3.tar.gz
tar zxf dbt2-0.37.50.3.tar.gz
...
97
votes
7
answers
150k
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creating a tar archive without including parent directory
I am trying to create a graphical program for my script.
Inside the script I use tar to create a tar archive.
From the graphical program I get the full name of file that I want to create a tar ...
87
votes
4
answers
162k
views
tar exits on "Cannot stat: No such file of directory", why?
I'm trying to create tar.gz file using the following command:
sudo tar -vcfz dvr_rdk_v1.tar.gz dvr_rdk/
It then start to create files (many files in folder), but then I get the following error:
tar:...
82
votes
3
answers
164k
views
scp and compress at the same time, no intermediate save
What is the canonical way to:
scp a file to a remote location
compress the file in transit (tar or not, single file or whole folder, 7za or something else even more efficient)
do the above without ...
81
votes
12
answers
92k
views
How can I best copy large numbers of small files over scp?
I have a directory that's got several gigabytes and several thousand small files. I want to copy it over the network with scp more than once. CPU time on the source and destination machines is cheap, ...
79
votes
2
answers
90k
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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. ...
60
votes
6
answers
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What are the differences between bsdtar and GNU tar?
I've always used GNU tar. However, all GNU/Linux distributions that I've seen ship bsdtar in their repositories. I've even seen it installed by default in some, IIRC. I know for sure that Arch GNU/...
56
votes
4
answers
164k
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How to create tar archive in a different directory?
I want to create a tar archive in a different directory rather than the current directory.
I tried this command:
tar czf file.tar.gz file1 -C /var/www/
but it creates the archive in the current ...
53
votes
4
answers
40k
views
Does tar actually compress files, or just group them together?
I usually assumed that tar was a compression utility, but I am unsure, does it actually compress files, or is it just like an ISO file, a file to hold files?
51
votes
8
answers
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Is there a parallel file archiver (like tar)?
Is there something out there for parallel archiving of files?
Tar is great, but I don't use tape archives, and it's more important to me that the archiving happens quickly (with compression like ...
50
votes
3
answers
110k
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Extract multiple .tar.gz files with a single tar call
I was wondering whether (and, of course, how) it’s possible to tell tar to extract multiple files in a single run.
I’m an experienced Unix user for several years and of course I know that you can use ...
49
votes
5
answers
91k
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Create target directory when extracting tarball
Is it possible to create a target directory, similar to mkdir -p, where I can define a non-existent target directory within my tar command, and tar will create the directory for me?
I know I can ...
49
votes
1
answer
46k
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ansible extract without first directory
When extracting a tar.gz file in ansible I end up with a first directory
- name: Extract archive
unarchive: src=file.tar.gz
dest=/foo/bar
which results in /foo/bar/bar-version-...
47
votes
4
answers
119k
views
Why can't tar extract .zip files? [closed]
I tried a majority of the formats (gzip, etc.) to extract a zip file with tar, and when I became frustrated enough to Google for it, I found no way to extract a zip file with tar and only ...
45
votes
5
answers
13k
views
Why use superflous dash (-) to pass option flags to tar?
To create a tar file for a directory, the tar command with compress, verbose and file options can be typed thus:
$ tar -cvf my.tar my_directory/
But it also works to do it this way:
$ tar cvf my....
42
votes
5
answers
73k
views
How to solve “tar: invalid magic” error on Linux Alpine
I'm installing sqlite on Alpine Linux. I download sqlite-autoconf-3130000.tar.gz but tar could not open it. I tried this answer but it's not working. tar gives this message:
tar: invalid magic
tar: ...
41
votes
7
answers
30k
views
tar extraction depends on filename?
I often download tarballs with wget from sourceforge.net.
The downloaded files then are named, e.g SQliteManager-1.2.4.tar.gz?r=http:%2F%2Fsourceforge.net%2Fprojects%2Fsqlitemanager%2Ffiles%2F&ts=...
37
votes
1
answer
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views
Is there a way to tar multiple files in a directory (Linux/Unix)?
Is there a fairly simple way to tar several (specific) files in a directory? For example let's say the following is a directory:
-rw-r--r-- 1 allend bin 98 Jul 20 15:50 scriptlog.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 ...
37
votes
5
answers
4k
views
How to untar safely, without polluting the current directory in case of a tarbomb?
Respectable projects release tar archives that contain a single directory, for instance zyrgus-3.18.tar.gz contains a zyrgus-3.18 folder which in turn contains src, build, dist, etc.
But some punk ...
35
votes
4
answers
62k
views
Fastest way combine many files into one (tar czf is too slow)
Currently I'm running tar czf to combine backup files. The files are in a specific directory.
But the number of files is growing. Using tzr czf takes too much time (more than 20 minutes and counting)....
35
votes
3
answers
78k
views
Test tar file integrity in bash
I have a bash script that creates a '.tar' file. Once the file is created, I would like to test its integrity and send an email to the root user if the integrity is bad.
I know I would need to use ...
34
votes
5
answers
36k
views
Tar a folder without .git files?
If I tar a folder that is a git repository, can I do so without including the .git related files? If not, how would I go about doing that via a command?
34
votes
2
answers
5k
views
Why is tar archive so much bigger than text file, 10240 bytes?
I've checked these two questions (question one, question two), but they were not helpful for me to understand. I have a file file.txt with 40 lines of Hello World! string. ls -l shows that its size is ...
34
votes
2
answers
45k
views
Prevent showing time stamp message when running "tar xzf"
When running tar xzf, how to prevent this message (Prevent showing time stamp message):
tar: node: time stamp 2011-06-07 02:02:30 is 8309 s in the future
tar: user/Node: time stamp 2011-06-07 01:56:...
34
votes
4
answers
50k
views
What does --strip-components -C mean in tar?
I want to make sure I understand the following code:
tar xvzf FILE --exclude-from=exclude.me --strip-components 1 -C DESTINATION
which was posted in this answer.
From man tar:
--strip-components=...
32
votes
4
answers
67k
views
tar with relative paths
I try to create an archive with tar using relative paths. I use the following command:
tar czf ~/files/wp/my-page-order.tar.gz -C ~/webapps/zers/wp-content/plugins/ ~/webapps/zers/wp-content/plugins/...
31
votes
3
answers
8k
views
How do I securely extract an untrusted tar file?
I would like to be able to extract a tar file, such that all extracted files are placed under a certain prefix directory. Any attempt by the tar files to write to outside directories should cause the ...
30
votes
5
answers
52k
views
View a file in a tar archive without extracting it
I want to view the content of the tarred file without extracting it,
Scenario: I have a.tar and inside there is a file called ./x/y.txt. I want to view the content of y.txt without actually ...
30
votes
3
answers
44k
views
Encrypting and compressing
Is there a better way to compress and then encrypt files other than tar followed by openssl or gpg?
29
votes
2
answers
2k
views
Is it true that a tarball can change where files are extracted to regardless of the commands used to extract it?
I have a coworker who says you need to be careful extracting tarballs because they can make changes you don't know about. I always thought a tarball was just a hierarchy of compressed files, so if you ...
29
votes
7
answers
61k
views
tar + rsync + untar. Any speed benefit over just rsync?
I often find myself sending folders with 10K - 100K of files to a remote machine (within the same network on-campus).
I was just wondering if there are reasons to believe that,
tar + rsync + ...
29
votes
7
answers
28k
views
What to use to backup files, preserving ACLs?
When using the tar utility to store files in backups one loses the extended ACLs.
Is there some commonly used and not hackish solution (like: create a script that will recrate the ACLs from scratch) ...
27
votes
5
answers
41k
views
How do I compress files in-place?
I have a machine with 90% hard-disk usage. I want to compress its 500+ log files into a smaller new file. However, the hard disk is too small to keep both the original files and the compressed ones.
...
27
votes
3
answers
20k
views
What does the -f parameter do in the tar command
When using tar I always include -f in the parameters but I have no idea why.
I looked up the man and it said;
-f, --file [HOSTNAME:]F
use archive file or device F (default
"-", meaning stdin/stdout)...
26
votes
3
answers
40k
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 ...
26
votes
6
answers
20k
views
How can I determine if running tar will cause disk to fill up
If I run tar -cvf on a directory of size 937MB to create an easily downloadable copy of a deeply nested folder structure, do I risk filling the disk given the following df -h output:
/dev/xvda1 ...
26
votes
1
answer
51k
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 ...
25
votes
2
answers
11k
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 ...
24
votes
5
answers
41k
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tar without preserving user [duplicate]
I'd like to compress some files for http distribution, but found that .tar.gz keeps the user name and user ID and there doesn't seem to be any way to not do that? (There is a --numeric-owner option ...
24
votes
5
answers
40k
views
tar extract into directory with same base name?
I have a ziped file like myArchive123.tar.gz. Inside it contains a folder like helloWorld
If I extract it: tar -xf myArchive123.tar.gz I get the helloWorld folder:
ls
myArchive123.tar.gz
helloWorld ...