using tar to list backup date

[Norman_21]

Hi Guys,

I would appreciate if someone can advise how to extract the last date from a tar backup tape.
the command
tar tv
will list all the files. I don't realy need to see the files but just the date.
Thanks in advance.

[Michael Tully · Accepted solution]

Hi,

As 'tar' does not actually create a header from which the backup has been performed (like 'fbackup'), it is not actually possible to get an exact date.

You could however guesstimate by extracting a file list and viewing the contents of /tmp or /var/tmp These two areas do get files written to them all the time.

Regards
Michael

[Norman_21]

Hi Micheale,

I appreciate your quick support. Could you please provide me with an example.
This is very important because I mixed up the labels on two tape with the same date and I want to find out which is which.

Thanks again.

[Michael Tully]

To get the contents off the tape. Substitute you tape drive device if yours is different to /dev/rmt/0m

# tar tvf /dev/rmt/0m >/tmp/tape.out

One good example of getting the date and time of a file other than something in /var or /var/tmp is
/etc/utmp
/var/adm/wtmp
/var/adm/syslog/syslog.log

If you can, I suggest you use 'fbackup'. It creates volume headers, it is far more flexible than 'tar' and can write more than 2Gb of data to tape. 'tar' cannot do these things.

HTH
Michael

[T G Manikandan]

tar does not have a header to find out the date directly.
The only way is to do a tvf of the file you are trying to restore.

as Micheal suggested fbackup has those features
It uses this
/var/adm/fbackupfiles/dates
file to store the date of backup.
THus incremental backup's are possible using fbackup.

Thanks

[Elif Gius]

Go to the directory you want to tar...then "touch a file" and after that create your tar archive of the directoriy...

then you 'll have a file which will tell you the date
in a script you can do something like this

#Time stamp
temp="/dir/$(date +%d.%m.%y_%H:%M)"
touch $temp

[Norman_21]

Closed...