[SOLVED] Creating tar gz from directory

Mark_667 · 07-18-2012, 07:56 AM

I'm trying to backup some files to a tar.gz file while preserving file permissions but I'm confused about where to specify the filename. I've tried:

Code:

cp -R -p /var/log /mnt/Backup | tar -c MachineNameLogs$date.tar | gzip -r MachineNameLogs$date.tar.gz

MachineNameLogs20120718.tar.gz: No such file or directory
tar: MachineNameLogs20120718.tar: No such file or directory

I've also tried:

Code:

cp -R -p /var/log /mnt/Backup | tar | gzip -r MachineNameLogs$date.tar.gz

machineNameLogs20120718.tar.gz: No such file or directory
Usage: tar {txruc}[vfbFXhiBEelmopwnq[0-7]] [-k size] [tapefile] [blocksize] [exclude-file] [-I include-file] files ...

pan64 · 07-18-2012, 08:07 AM

Code:

cd /var/log
tar cfzv /mnt/Backup/MachineNameLogs$date.tar.gz .

something like this should work.
in your command cp will not send the required data to the pipe, tar will not take usable data from the pipe and cannot write file and also send data to pipe, gzip cannot do recursive operation on stdin and will not write the result to the given file, so almost everything is wrong.

Mark_667 · 07-18-2012, 08:25 AM

Perhaps not entirely wrong, the version of tar I'm using doesn't have a conviant z option, hence the reason I was piping it to gzip:

Code:

tar: z: unknown option
Usage: tar {txruc}[vfbFXhiBEelmopwnq[0-7]] [-k size] [tapefile] [blocksize] [exclude-file] [-I include-file] files ...

What would be the best way to do it with this in mind?

pan64 · 07-18-2012, 08:30 AM

in that case cd /var/log; tar cvf - . | gzip > /mnt/Backup/MachineNameLogs$date.tar.gz will do the job.

You ought to look at the man pages of these tools: gzip will compress stdin (from pipe) to stdout and you can redirect output to write the final file.
tar will create an archive (c), will be verbose (v) and send the result to stdout (f -). Tar is recursive by default.