As a test I:
cd testdir
touch .hidden
cd ../
tar -cvf test.tar testdir
I then tar -tf test.tar and the file .hidden is in there

I then backed up my home directory from /home:
tar -cvf homebu-04.20.205.tar /myhomedir
I watched and it looked like it was getting all the .hidden files.

I deleted my home directory and created /home on a different partition.
I then did a tar -xvf homebu-04.20.205.tar to my new home directory.
All my hidden files are missing!!!

2 questions.... Near as I can tell, tar did backup the hidden files.... Am I doing something wrong in the extraction? Or did I just fubar the tarball during the backup.

The tarball is about 9Gig long. (video editing) Could that have something to do with the problem?

TIA

-J

I performed a similar test, tarring and then untarring a directory that contained some PNGs and a couple hidden files. They were extracted successfully. I then created a hidden directory with files in it.

Perhaps as a check, see if the .kde directory exists in your new homepage. 'ls -lad .kde/'
If not, try extracting just the .kde directory:
tar xvf homebu-04.20.205.tar myhomedir/.kde

Note that you need to include the full path for the .kde directory. Since you tarred the entire myhomedir directory, that is where the filename starts.

Also use the 't' command to list the contents of the tarred file. You might want to redirect the output to a file or the less command. Are the hidden files and directories in the listing?

For comparison, my version of tar is:
tar (GNU tar) 1.14

I ran tar -xvf homebu-04.20.205.tar,

It seems that what is missing is most of my hidden directories, specifically:
/home/myhomedir/.gnupg
/home/myhomedir/.mozilla
/home/myhomedir/.kde <<<---- missing in tarball
/home/myhomedir/.local ...etc

It looks like everything hidden right under myhomedir/ that had a dot in front of it is missing. However interestingly enough everything the level down in the branch got backed up and restored successfully, i.e.

/home/myhomedir/Mail/.foo.com.directory
/home/myhomedir/Mail/.foo.com.index
/home/myhomedir/Mail/.index.index

The above results are from a full restore of the tarball.... unless there are hidden files in the tarball.

Almost forgot:

tar --version
tar (GNU tar) 1.15.1

-J

Hi

I've tried to do :

tar -Pcf myhome.tar /home/myhome/*

after checking myhome.tar by

tar -tf myhome.tar

I found that all my hidden files are ignored.
Then I tried it again this way:

tar -Pcf myhome.tar /home/myhome

and the result was excellent, all my hidden files and directories were tarred in my tar file.
I don't know if you've used the wildcard "*" (star) but in my case it WAS the problem.

my tar version is:

tar (GNU tar) 1.13.25

-Cheers
Faramarz Salehpour

I know I did not tar with the -P switch.

As I recall I cd /home and typed:

tar -cvf homebu-04.20.205.tar /myhomedir

I did no use the * Once get everything moved over to the new installation I will check this further.

-J