how to tar dot files?

rocky180 · 08-18-2005, 11:59 AM

Hi,

Was just wondering how to tar . files? Cos I heard that it doesn't!

Rocky180

Boow · 08-18-2005, 12:34 PM

Do you mean hidden files and directorys

rocky180 · 08-18-2005, 12:37 PM

Yes I do mean hidden files and directories.

Am interested in making sure everything is backed up from a specific point all the way in.

Rocky180

rnicolson · 08-18-2005, 12:49 PM

If you are doing an entire directory you can do this;

tar cfv test.tar test/

This will create test.tar containing the entire directory test which has hidden files in it.

$ tar cfv test.tar test/
test/
test/test
test/.test1

was the output from my test of this command.

Boow · 08-18-2005, 12:49 PM

yes tar will archive every thing in a directory hidden stull as well.

rocky180 · 08-18-2005, 01:06 PM

Yes all good, even tested it myself.

Thanks.

I wonder why one of my bosses has spent ages redeveloping the wheel as he was under the impression that tar didn't do hidden file, which in turn made me beleive it didn't either.

Anyways there must be a reason.

Thanks again.

Rocky180.

ps. Is there a way to close the thread?

whittycat · 08-22-2007, 03:54 AM

tar usually archives hidden files and directories but there is one way it might not. If you run tar from within the directory like this

cd test
tar cf ../test.tar *

the the hidden files don't get archived. That may be what the boss was doing. It is not too surprising since with

ls -R *

you don't get them so it is the natural way to understand *.