difference in size of the tarred files after archiving using tar command
 

i am using red hat linux 2.4 . I have 3 folders dir1 dir2 dir3

I have tarred them like this.
1.tar cvfz tarball_1.tgz dir1 dir2 dir3
2.tar cvfz tarball_2.tgz dir1 dir2 dir3 2>& /dev/null (So that it does not display any error message or operation details to the user)

[usr@machine]$ ls -lrt
-rw-r--r-- 1 usr grp 199843988 May 17 13:39 tarball_1.tgz
-rw-r--r-- 1 usr grp 199837488 May 17 13:53 tarball_2.tgz

But can any one explain the size difference as seen in list output...

did u mean

or

coz I m getting any error as follows with first one

And i m not see any difference with bot commands u mentioned. I m getting same size

The same for me. Apparently there is no reason why they should differ, unless their actual content is different. What is the output of the following?

Hi,

The second command is "tar cvfz tarball_2.tgz dir1 dir2 dir3 2>& /dev/null" only.
I have used this to redirect stdout and stderr so that the ouput as well as the error message(if any) will not be displayed to the user. Its a part of error handling in my script.

I dont understand why you are getting the error while issuing the same...

Pls do reply.

I am actually getting a diff in both files buy doing cmp of both the files created buy just a simple tar withoput redirting. I am assuming the diff is in the info of timestamps of the stored files

@emagnun

I don't know why I m getting that error, but i was able to solve it by putting the "&" before the ">" symbol