tar extracting specific directories

[Joel R. Ong]

Hi, I'm having problems extracting a tar archive from a multi-volume tape.

There are several directories on the tar file and I only want to extract a few subdirectories recursively.

I have tried:

tar -xvf /dev/rmt/0m /data1 /data2

but it doesn't extract the directories. It just reads until it prompts for the next device. This is a multi-volume tar tape consisting of seven 4gb tapes, and I *know* that /data1 would be on the first tape.

I've also tried

tar -xvf /dev/rmt/0m /data1/ /data2/

with just the same luck. And yes, if you ask, the /data1 and /data2 directories were backed-up with absolute directory paths.

Can anyone point out what I am doing wrong?
Thanks :)

[Rajeev Shukla]

Extracting specific directories from a tar files only needs that way they were backed up or tar'd
if you did a tar -cvf /dev/rmt/0m *
then to untar you need to do tar -xvf /dev/rmt/0m data1 data2
and if you tared using
tar -cvf /dev/rmt/0m .
then you need to do tar -xvf /dev/rmt/0m /data1

do a tar tvf to list how they are backed up, if you dont see "/" in front then just follow

tar -xvf /dev/rmt/0m data1 data2
That should restore the directories,

Cheers
Rajeev

[Sanjay Kumar Suri]

I don't think anything wrong is being done. It seems tar will scan all the tapes to extract the required data.

sks