tar and directory timestamps

carlbrans · 02-13-2006, 01:59 PM

I want to tar -cf then tar -xf to recover a directory with the orginal
timestamps on subdirectories. I get "... cannot use utime.." error message in the tar -xf procedure, and directories are recovered, but with new timestamps. I want the original ones. Individual file timestamps are recovered, however.
I should have said that I am using SUSE 10 but it is running under VMWare box which is under Windows XP, using NTFS. A Windows person said that this NTFS will not allow copy preserving directory timestamps, so maybe this is inherited by the Linux system??

Tinkster · 02-13-2006, 04:17 PM

I don't think that has anything to do with the "underlying" NTFS,
VMWare doesn't use NTFS structures but operates on an image-file
that is (internally) file-system agnostic to its host.

tar actually preserves time-stamps by default. This may fail if
you're extracting to a file-system that's not Linux-native.

Cheers,
Tink

gilead · 02-13-2006, 04:28 PM

When I try it here by creating the archive with:

Code:

tar --atime-preserve -cf

And then extracting the archive with:

Code:

tar -xpvf

The date timestamps (shown with ls -ld) on the extracted directories are the same as those on the original directories. Do I have the wrong timestamp?

Tinkster · 02-13-2006, 04:38 PM

Eh?

I don't understand the purpose of your question:

Code:

--atime-preserve

means that the last-access time
on the original won't be modified when you're archiving it.

ls -ld outputs the c(m)time by default.

Cheers,
Tink

gilead · 02-13-2006, 05:28 PM

A better way to word my question might have been - was the time that was being preserved the same time that was being reported in the listing? Since one is atime and the other ctime, the answer is no - I was reading the wrong timestamp.