need syntax of tar command

[Debbie Fleith]

I need to restore 4 files from a system backup tape written to with tar. If I backed up to tape with the following command:

tar -cvp . -X /usr/bin/backuproot.exclude --label="Root Backup created on `date
'+%d-%B-%Y'`" -f /dev/st0

What is the syntax of the tar command that will restore a list of 4 filenames that I will put in a /tmp/filelist file?

Do the full pathnames of the files I put in my /tmp/filelist file need a "/" in front?

[Steven E. Protter]

tar xvf

P option will preserve absolute paths

F --file will let you retore one file from an archive and wildcards are accepted.

SEP

[Debbie Fleith]

I want to restore several files to a new path in one command if possible, and not overwrite the actual files. My tar command was executed from the / level.

[Steven E. Protter]

I think it will take multiple files in the --file section.

Try the command with a smaller tar archive against the /tmp filesystem. That way the experimentation won't harm anything important.

Good Luck,

SEP

[Gopi Sekar · Accepted solution]

if you want to extract only one particular from a tar archive then this is the syntax

tar -xvf tar-file.tar file-to-extract

file-to-extract is the filename with full path in the same exact manner how it is stored in archive. eg: home/user1/test_123/test

you can use wild cards for file-to-extract. eg: home/user1/test_123/*

or you can have list of files to be extracted in to a single file and use that as referrence to extract

eg:
file1 contains:
home/user1/test_123/test
home/user2/test/user
tmp/output

to extract these files, you can use the tar
command: tar --files-from file1 -xvf tar-file.tar

this will extract the specified files and store them relative to the current path, if you have not used absolute path referrence while creating the archive

Regards,
Gopi