[SOLVED] Tar-ring files from other directories and current directory

technizia · 08-06-2015, 06:32 AM

Hi,

Let's say, my current directory is /home. I have a file1 in my /home directory. I have another directory (say dir2) which has a lot of files. I want to tar selective 2 files (say file2, file3) from the directory dir2 and file1 from my /home into a tar.gz file.

Resultant tar needed : /home/1.tar.gz
Files to be tar'd :
1) /path/to/dir2/file2
2) /path/to/dir2/file3
3) /home/file1 (current directory)

I've tried -C option (because I want only the files in the resultant tar and not the directory structures) to tar (1) and (2) in this manner :
"tar -zcvf 1.tar.gz -C /path/to/dir2 file2 -C /path/to/dir2 file3

I'm not sure how to include the current directory's file1 in the above tar command.

Please help.

PS : The files need to be tar'd in the given order.

-T

rtmistler · 08-06-2015, 07:20 AM

Do not believe you need the -C nor the -z directives. Just use the literal pathnames for each file. And tar detects the target filename and appropriately does the zip operation on its own:

Code:

$ tar -cvf new.tar.gz sub-dir1/a.txt sub-dir2/b.txt c.txt
sub-dir1/a.txt
sub-dir2/b.txt
c.txt
$ ls -l
$ new.tar.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 myuser mygroup 10240 Aug 6 08:12 new.tar.gz
$ tar -tvf new.tar.gz
-rw-r--r-- myuser/mygroup     2 2015-05-07 07:43 sub-dir1/a.txt
-rwxr-xr-x myuser/mygroup     2 2014-09-26 14:40 sub-dir2/b.txt
-rw-r--r-- myuser/mygroup   219 2014-08-13 09:08 c.txt

Note you can also do something like this:

Code:

$ tar -cvf new.tar.gz sub-dir1/a.txt sub-dir2/b.txt
sub-dir1/a.txt
sub-dir2/b.txt
$ tar -rvf new.tar.gz c.txt
c.txt
$

The result is the same as above.

Perhaps it is easy if you remember that tar is Tape ARchive and all it is doing is creating an archive file, or a concatenation of all the files you add to that archive.

technizia · 08-06-2015, 07:25 AM

@rtmistler If you create the tar in this format - tar -cvf new.tar.gz sub-dir1/a.txt sub-dir2/b.txt c.txt, when you untar it is going to create the directory structure as is (sub-dir1/a.txt). But I want only the files to be tar'd i.e, only a.txt, b.txt, c.txt should be extracted when I untar and not with the directory structure. This is why I use -C to change directory and pick only the files.

HMW · 08-06-2015, 07:29 AM

You don't need the switch -C. You can simply add the files by giving the pathnames to tar. Like this:

Code:

tar -cvf tarball.tar dir1/foo/file1 dir2/bar/file2 file_current_dir 
a dir1/foo/file1
a dir2/bar/file2
a file_current_dir

Code:

tar -tvf tarball.tar
-rw-r--r--  0 HMW HMW       0  6 Aug 14:22 dir1/foo/file1
-rw-r--r--  0 HMW HMW       0  6 Aug 14:22 dir2/bar/file2
-rw-r--r--  0 HMW HMW       0  6 Aug 14:23 file_current_dir

Best regards,
HMW

Edit: rtmistler already answered. Ignore.

rtmistler · 08-06-2015, 07:31 AM

Normally I prefer to retain the directory structure. But given your desire, then you'd use the fully qualified pathnames:

Code:

tar -cvf new.tar.gz -C /home/myuser/sub-dir1 a.txt -C /home/myuser/sub-dir2 b.txt -C /home/myuser c.txt