tar command seems to only bundle-up the last file in the list when used with find.

[Danny Fang]

Hi,
I'm attempting to bundle-up approximately 70+ files into a tar bundle by using the find command.

Although the files are seen to be bundled up in the tar-bundle, in fact, they aren't.

The tar -tvf .tar shows that there is only file in the bundle and apparently it's the last file in the directory to be bundled.

bash-2.05$ find . -depth -type f -size 0 -exec tar -cvf zero-sized.tar {} \;
a ./002/008/aOFS_BSM_P02000000 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_OMU_P02000000 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_TMU_P02000000 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_CC_P02000000 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_BSC3GCEM_P02000000 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_TCU3GCEM_P02000000 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_BSC3GPCMPORT_P02000000 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_TCU3GPCMPORT_P02000000 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_BSM_P02000100 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_OMU_P02000100 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_TMU_P02000100 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_CC_P02000100 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_BSC3GCEM_P02000000 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_TCU3GCEM_P02000000 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_BSC3GPCMPORT_P02000000 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_TCU3GPCMPORT_P02000000 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_BSM_P02000100 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_OMU_P02000100 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_TMU_P02000100 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_CC_P02000100 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_BSC3GCEM_P02000100 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_TCU3GCEM_P02000100 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_BSC3GPCMPORT_P02000100 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_TCU3GPCMPORT_P02000100 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_BSM_P02000200 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_OMU_P02000200 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_TMU_P02000200 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_CC_P02000200 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_BSC3GCEM_P02000200 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_TCU3GCEM_P02000200 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_BSC3GPCMPORT_P02000200 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_TCU3GPCMPORT_P02000200 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_BSM_P02000300 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_OMU_P02000300 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_TMU_P02000300 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_CC_P02000300 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_BSC3GCEM_P02000300 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_TCU3GCEM_P02000300 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_BSC3GPCMPORT_P02000300 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_TCU3GPCMPORT_P02000300 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_BSM_P02000400 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_OMU_P02000400 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_TMU_P02000400 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_CC_P02000400 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_BSC3GCEM_P02000400 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_TCU3GCEM_P02000400 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_BSC3GPCMPORT_P02000400 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_TCU3GPCMPORT_P02000400 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_BSM_P02000500 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_OMU_P02000500 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_TMU_P02000500 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_CC_P02000500 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_BSC3GCEM_P02000500 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_TCU3GCEM_P02000500 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_BSC3GPCMPORT_P02000500 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_TCU3GPCMPORT_P02000500 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_BSM_P02000600 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_OMU_P02000600 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_TMU_P02000600 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_CC_P02000600 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_BSC3GCEM_P02000600 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_TCU3GCEM_P02000600 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_BSC3GPCMPORT_P02000600 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_TCU3GPCMPORT_P02000600 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_BSM_P02000700 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_OMU_P02000700 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_TMU_P02000700 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_CC_P02000700 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_BSC3GCEM_P02000700 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_TCU3GCEM_P02000700 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_BSC3GPCMPORT_P02000700 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_TCU3GPCMPORT_P02000700 0K
a ./002/008/aOFS_BSM_P02000800 0K
bash-2.05$ tar -tvf zero-sized.tar
tar: blocksize = 3
-rw-r----- 5041/111 0 Oct 6 10:05 2008 ./zero-sized/aOFS_TCU3GPCMPORT_P02000700
bash-2.05$ df -k .
Filesystem kbytes used avail capacity Mounted on
klstor01:/datavol/prodkl
47185920 43803530 3239390 94% /nfs/kl/prodkl
bash-2.05$

Note that the disk usage has not even reached 100% yet.

Could anyone help out with this issue?

Thanks
Danny.

[Ivan Ferreira · Accepted solution]

You are replacing your tar file at each tar command, so, having only the last file on it is normal.

You should use the concatenate (-A) option instead of the create (-c) option.

You may change your command also as below:

tar cvf zero-sized.tar $(find . -depth -type f -size 0 )

[Hemmetter]

Hi Danny,

You may also replace the \; to \+ in your find-command. This prevents also executing tar for each file by cumulating occurances of {}.

Thus:

$ find . -depth -type f -size 0 -exec tar -cvf zero-sized.tar {} \+


see find(1) about parameter -exec




rgds
HGH

[Steven Schweda]

If we assume that you're in the right forum
(Linux), then your "tar" should be GNU "tar", and GNU "tar" offers some useful options,
like "--files-from=- or -T -", which causes
it to read from standard input a list of
files to process. You could simply pipe the
output from your "find" command into a single
"tar" command using this technique.

http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/tar.html#SEC101


> see find(1) about parameter -exec

"man find" could be informative, too, if
it's still not clear why your original
command failed.