Tar won't correctly restore from incremental backups

therealbeale · 08-31-2006, 05:11 AM

Hi,

I've been trying to use tar (GNU tar 1.15) to do incremental backups. My test directory, BKTEST, contains 2 directories, Test1 and Test2. Test2 contains 4 files.

I can successfully perform a full backup of BKTEST with this:

Code:

tar --create -P --listed-incremental=/var/log/BK_test.snar --file full.tar "/home/therealbeale/BKTEST/"

However, if I then move the contents of Test2 into Test1 and delete the Test2 folder and then do an incremental backup, the files are not restored correctly when I extract the archives. What am I doing wrong?

I do the incremental backup with:

Code:

tar --create -P --listed-incremental=/var/log/BK_test.snar --file inc1.tar "/home/therealbeale/BKTEST/"

and then restore with:

Code:

tar --extract --verbose --listed-incremental=/dev/null -f full.tar
tar --extract --verbose --listed-incremental=/dev/null -f inc1.tar

The directory structure is correctly restored, but there are no files restored into Test1.

Can anyone help me make this work? Is this a bug? Is tar not to be trusted?

Any help would be appreciated.

Cheers

Chris

jstephens84 · 08-31-2006, 10:02 PM

Tar can certainly be trusted. You might have luck with commands dump and restore. However dump and restore are mainly used for full directories or system backups while tar is great for single directories and more.

http://www.linux.com/guides/solrhe/S...29sec305.shtml This may also help. It does assume that you have a tape drive what you can always change around the command parameters to suite your needs.