how to find and tar?

[Sachin_29]

Hi :
I am trying to find all the files in a directory which are 30 days old and tar .
I am doing
find $DIRNMAE -name "test.log.*" -type f -a -mtime +30 -exec tar -cvpf file.tar "{}" \;
the problem is its creating the tar for each file and so when I untar it just has the last file in it..
Is there any other way? Can I crate a 0 byte tar and use tar -uvpf? I am just not sure how to go for that.
Any suggestions?

[Sundar_7 · Accepted solution]

Try this

# touch somefile
# tar -cvf file.tar somefile
# find $DIRNAME -name "test.log.*" -type f -a -mtime +30 -exec tar -rvf file.tar {} \;

I am sure there are other ways around.

[Sachin_29]

works thanks!!!

[Stuart Browne]

As 'tar' doesn't take a file-list from stdin (like 'cpio' or other such tools), you either have to append to the tar file created (as Sundar has given an example), or provide the file-list as arguments, i.e.

# tar -cvf file.tar $(find . -type f -name "test.log.*" -mtime +30 -print)

If you expect a lot of them however, Sundar's example is much better, as this method can generate a long-list of filenames exceeding the argument list limit.