How can I get tar to exclude mount points

[John D. Reaney]

Have a 10.20 system (K450) that has sybase - trying to do the following:
Backup /home/sybase (But want to exclude /home/sybase/dumps).

the -T option doesnt work to read from a list and I tried a find piped to tar but it complained that the file list was too long

Any ideas on where to go now.

[Dan Hetzel]

Hi,

If you want to avoid the "argument list too long"
message, use xargs as in the following command:

find /home/sybase -xdev | xargs tar cvf /dev/rmt/0m (or any other device)

Dan

[Rainer_1]

use pax instead:
find /home/sybase | grep -v /home/sybase/dump | pax -wf /dev/rmt/0m

[Carlos Fernandez Riera]

Use pax

Pax writes tar achives file format by default and X (uppercase) flag.

Files writed with pax can be read with tar.

See man pax

[Carlos Fernandez Riera]

The fisrt reply can generate more than once recordings on tape.

You dont need to use find with pax.



Use pax -w -f /dev/rmt/.... /filesystem or directory.

[Dan Hetzel]

Rainer,

As said at the bottom of the pax manpage,
its current implementation is based on a
Posix 2 draft and HP recommends using the
current version only if absolutely
necessary.

I wouldn't save any important stuff without
being sure to be able to re-read it later.

:-((

Dan

[John D. Reaney]

Thanks - I am trying the xargs right now - may look at pax if this doesnt work, but this is for the dba, and she just wants to tar up her files before an upgrade, I wanted to make it easy for her.

I will post results shortly (and probly try pax anyway - am looking at the man page right now)

[John D. Reaney]

I did this:

find /home/sybase -xdev | xargs tar -cvf /home/sybase/dumps/jdr.tar

but it still put the /home/sybase/dumps files in the tar.

and yes they are diff mount points
/dev/vg0101/lvsybase1
698133 500060 128259 80% /home/sybase
/dev/vg0101/lvsybdump1
1502713 421077 931364 31% /home/sybase/dumps

the find with -xdev works I know, but havent used xargs.

[Dan Hetzel]

Hi John,

As the -xdev option of find visits the mount
point without visinting the entries below it,
your xargs tar command receives the /home/sybase/dumps as input.

Adding flag -type f will do the job.

Your command should now look like:

find /home/sybase -type f -xdev | xargs ....

I should have tested the command before posting ;-)

Hope this helps

Dan

[James R. Ferguson]

John:

An alternative approach would be to use 'fbackup' with a graph that includes and excludes the directories you require. See the man pages (1M) for fbackup/frestore. This forum contains a great deal of good discussion regarding fbackup if you are unfamilar with it, too.

...JRF...

[Kofi ARTHIABAH]

John:

you would want to use the find however, if there are other mount points below /home/sybase that you would like to include, -xdev would not help you. Also, if /home/sybase/dump is not a file system, it would not help you. You could try a combination of find and grep -v as follows:

find /home/sybase -print | grep -v "/home/sybase/dump/*" | xargs ....

Good luck

[John D. Reaney]

I tried the find with the -type f option but the tar file does not contain all the files, gonna try this and see what i get:

find /home/sybase -xdev -exec tar -cvf /home/sybase/dumps/out.tar {} ;

maybe maybe.. what do you think

[Dan Hetzel]

John,

I don't understand why your tar file doesn't
include all the files.

Does the command find /xxx -type f -xdev
show all needed files?
Do you have the right permissions to read
all the files?

Dan

PS: adding the -exec tar won't help because
the mountpoint is still visited.
As soon as tar receives a directory as
argument, all files below it are archived.
That's why I added th e-type f option.

[John D. Reaney]

I know I dont understand either - driving me nuts. I am now combining a few responses and trying this..

find /home/sybase print |grep -"/home/sybase/dumps" | xargs tar -cvf /home/sybase/dumps/sybdump.tar

The find command on its own (find /home/sybase print |grep -"/home/sybase/dumps" ) works fine - however the tar was creating files in that dir when I used the -xdev on the find.

Will update in a few when job finishes and I thank all of you for you help..

[John D. Reaney]

OK more perplexing stuff:

when i run: find /home/sybase print |grep -v "/home/sybase/dumps" | grep dum i dont get /home/sybase/dumps but when I change teh grep dum to xargs tar cvf /home/sybase/dumps/sybas.tar it wants to tar the /home/sybase/dumps filesystem.....

[Devbinder Singh Marway]

DO you have to use tar , can you use cpio
cd dir
find . -xdev -print | cpio -ovcdumB > /dev/rmt/??

[John D. Reaney]

what command to extract then if is use cpio o

[Dan Hetzel]

Or, if you want to copy the whole tree,
without crossing the mount point:

find /home/sybase -type f -xdev | cpio -pdvum

v is optional, as it gives verbose info on the files copied.

[Devbinder Singh Marway · Accepted solution]

cd into / and issue cpio -ivcdumB
nb: < to read in > to send out
i to restore o to output / backup

[Kevin Ernst]

If you don't need to exchange these tapes with another site, why not use GNU tar. It can exclude directories specified on the command line (using the --exclude option), and has a host of other wonderful features.

You can download a precompiled binary in SD depot format from a HP-UX Porting and Archive Center mirror in your neighborhood (like http://hpux.cae.wisc.edu ). The documentation for GNU tar is very thorough, though you will need to install the 'texinfo' depot as well, as it is in 'texinfo' format. (A terse 'man' page is included as well, for quick reference.)

[Kevin Ernst]

Actually, I think you only run into the compatibility issues between GNU and other 'tar's when you get into multi-volume backups, odd blocking factors, block compression, and volume labels and such, which other vendors' 'tar's won't understand. There is an entire section in the GNU tar 'texinfo' documentation on portability guidelines.

Fbackup/frestore is another option, of course, but that would exclude any possibility of restoring the backup sets on some other (non-HP-UX) platform. Which may not even be a concern at your site...