topic Simple TAR command in Operating System - Linux

Simple TAR command

admin1979 — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 09:15:46 GMT

Just a simple question about tar.

We have a filesystem,

/
/boot
/usr/users

In order to take the backup of these filesystems, we connected USB drive and mounted under /usb.

Then to get the root backup , I used

tar -cvf root.tar /

And it showed as after few minutes it was taking the backup of /usb contents as well.

Oooops something not expected. Is it a normal behaviour , or we are missing some option here?
How do we avoid this.
In short how do we take the complete filesystem backup excluding specific filesystems?

You guys must be running backup scripts for so many years ... then how did you manage to handle this situation.
Please suggest.

Thanx,
admin

Re: Simple TAR command

Michal Kapalka (mikap) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 09:56:50 GMT

hi,

you should use --exclude=usb,

and don;t forget use -p ( for the file/directory ownership )

mikap

Re: Simple TAR command

Michal Kapalka (mikap) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 10:03:19 GMT

hi,

if the usb disk is mounted as /usb

and you in the root /

them

tar cvfp /usb/file+of_backup.tar --directory / --exclude=usb

mikap

Re: Simple TAR command

admin1979 — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 10:24:04 GMT

Ok thanx. Let me try it out and get back here.

Re: Simple TAR command

Goran Koruga — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 10:25:15 GMT

Hi.

This is expected.

or better yet, use the "--one-file-system" option with tar.

Goran