Easy scripting question

tejama · 02-13-2008, 11:09 AM

I'm trying to write a script to tar a list of files in a directory. The line I'm using is:

tar -cvf /home/ma1234/blah.tar /home/ma1234/test/*.*

The issue I'm having is that this line does create the archive, but when I extract it, it is the full directory structure (ie: the home directory is listed, the I can drill down to the ma1234, then finally to the test directory where all the files are located).

How can I modify this script to include only the files and not the directory structure?

Thanks.

bigrigdriver · 02-13-2008, 11:22 AM

Code:

tar -cvf /home/ma1234/blah.tar /home/ma1234/test/*.*

To have tar archive the contents of /test, and leave the archive in /home/ma1234 with the filename blah.tar, your script has to cd to /home/ma1234 before making the archive.

Code:

cd /home/ma1234
tar cvf blah.tar test/*

druuna · 02-13-2008, 11:34 AM

Hi,

Or use the tar options:

tar cfC /home/ma1234/blah.tar /home/ma1234 .

The above command will create a tar file called blah.tar in the directory called /home/ma1234. Before tar starts tarring it first cd's to /home/ma1234 (with use of the C option) and tar's all from there (the . [dot]).

tejama · 02-13-2008, 12:08 PM

Thanks guys. I tried both solutions and both worked perfectly.