Hi - first post here as my Google-fu failed me

I am using Redhat Enterprise Linux and have come across a strange problem using tar. I am issuing the command as follows:-

tar -czfp /directoryhere/filename.tar.gz /directorytobackup --exclude "/directoryhere"

and although it whirs away and completes, I am left with a file named p.

Just p - no extensions, nothing...

So, having successfully used tar before but not with .gz I removed that from the equation, using filename.tar instead - guess what - p again!

If I try to un-tar the file named p it justs sits there and does absolutely nothing.

Any ideas at all would be greatly appreciated!

It's the fp that's doing it. See the man page for what the f option does.

Ah, that would explain it...!

I'll get my coat.

Thankyou

Don't worry -- it happens to all of us; sometimes you get so close to a problem you can't see the wood for the trees. We used to have a great technique in one support team I worked in called "stone walling". When one of us got really stuck on a problem we would explain it to a colleague. In the act of explaining it from the beginning we had to look again at parts of the problem we could no longer see. Almost always, when we were explaining the simple basics of the problem we would have that "eureka moment" -- Ah! Of course!

We called it "stone walling" because, for all the expertise of our colleagues they mostly did nothing but listen -- they might as well have been a stone wall for all the input they made.

I guess we should have taken the technique to its logical conclusion and not have bothered our colleagues at all. Any inanimate object would have done, just so long as we were serious about explaining the problem to it. Picture the scene -- members of the technical support team talking to doors to solve problems!

tar czfp /directoryhere/filename.tar.gz ...
or
tar -czpf /directoryhere/filename.tar.gz ...

Should do it. Your problem is that -f expects the filename to immediatly follow it, and you gave it "p". Either using the old-style flags (no "-") or reordering the -switches will work. With the first form, it expects arguments in the same order as the switches and does not require proximity.