Incremental "tar" Backup in HP-Ux

[Raj D.]

Hi All , Can I take incremental tar backup in HP-UX.

That means , overwriting the tape with some more contents.

Regards,

Raj. D.
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[Steve Steel]

Hi

man tar


u Add any named file to the archive if it is not already
present or has been modified since it was last written in
the archive. The same blocking factor used to create the
archive must be used to update it.


Or just rewrite it with tar -cvf

For backups fbackup is a better choice


Steve Steel

[Sanjay Kumar Suri]

tar doex not support increamental backups whereas fbackup does.

Use fbackup. It has more features.

sks

[Trond Haugen · Accepted solution]

That is two questions.
1. Can tar make incremental backups.
Answer: No. But you could use some find options to do this.

2. Can tar overwrite the tape with more contents.
Answer: tar can APPEND more files with the 'u' option.

If you want to make incremental backups fbackup is a far better alternative.

Regards,
Trond

[Raj D.]

Thanks to all who replied and Trond ,

I ll try the -u option , to append more file , as mentioned.

Thanks ,
Raj D.
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[Stefan Schulz]

Hi,

you will create differential backups by adding newer content to your tar file. thats an difference to an incremental backup. But if this is what you want then tar -u is an option.

Generally i would go for a real backupsolution if you have to do mission critical backups.

But for easy, cheap and scriptable backups tar can be a nice solution.

I know fbackup is often suggested but i had some bad experience where fbackup didn't backup some files but reported them without error message. Didn't experience something like this with tar.

Hope this helps

Regards Stefan