1) Whats the difference between --incremental and --listed-incremental?
Is Incremental an obsolete or outdated option? The description (which I may not understand) seems less complicated than --listed-incremental.

2) Does every dump (level 0 and level 1) have its own seperate snapshot file(.snar)? Or does the snapshot have info on multiple dumps. Snapshots is the most confusing part of this and the Gnu Tar Manual is less than clear on the topic.

3) Can anyone help me over this hump?

I can do a full incremental(level 0) with no problem. I can do a 'level 1' with no problem. But I do not understand .snar.

Does the first 'level 1' add to the .snar or does it recreate .snar?

If I have a 'level 0' and a 'level 1', do I then have 1 .snar file or 2 .snar files?

Soooo confusing.

bump

sofasurfer,

Your question appears to be more about incremental backups than general tar usage as your subject implies. Just to be clear, the main use of tar is to build archives for distributing files such as programs. If you want to do that, you don't need to care about snar files at all.

Incremental backups are used for archiving data repeatedly, to avoid having to rebuild the entire archive all the time and reduce archive size.

A level 0 backup is basically an archive (.tar) file, and just contains the current state of the files, and puts additional information into a separate archive (.snar) file.

A level 1 backup is just a normal archive (.tar) file too, but any files that haven't changed since the level 0 backup was made aren't included.

If you use --incremental after a level 0 backup, then it will create a level 1 archive, but it won't create a new (.snar) file, so you any subsequent backups based on this archive. This is useful when you have a directory containing files that need to be archived, but rarely change.

If you use --listed-incremental after a level 0 backup, it will also create a level 1 archive. It will also create a new (.snar) file. This means that any subsequent backups can be based on this archive. This is useful when you want to archive a directory containing files which change frequently.


You should use different filenames for each snar file. The examples at http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manu...tal-Dumps.html use a -level postfix to the filename (.snar, .snar-1, etc).

Hope that helps,

—Robert J Lee

If your main interest is incremental backups, check out star. It is like tar, I believe even upward compatible, but it offers many more options for incrementals. The man page is about 3000 lines, no need to repeat it here. It is probably available in your distro but has to be installed.

jlinkels

Thanks for your replies. I have had not much luck with getting replies to my recent TAR (or I quess I should say TAR backup) questions.

I have successfully done a level 0 and 1 backup. Here is my progress...

I did a level 0 backup with...

"sudo tar cvf terry-archive.1.tar --listed-incremental=/home/terry.snar terry".

This gave me a file called "terry-archive.1.tar" and a "terry.snar" file. I am not sure if this .snar file is empty or if it has data about the level 0 archive.

Next I made some changes to my /terry directory. So now I am going to do an incremental backup (level 1) of the directory.

So I did a "sudo cp terry.snar terry.snar-2". Then I did the backup...

"sudo tar cvf terry-archive.2.tar --listed-incremental=/home/terry.snar terry".

This gave me a file called "terry-archive.2.tar" and a "terry/.snar" file.

I then listed "terry-archive.1.tar" and "terry-archive.2.tar" and the contents were as they should be. I also deleted the directory from my file system and then extracted the archives individually and they worked perfect.

Now if I want to do a 2nd level 1 backup I do not know how to handle the .snar situation. I do not see a reference to a 2nd level 1 in the "gnu tar manual". Can you guide me a little more?

Thanks.