CentOS - Mar 2011 - tar exclude question

Hi List,

hope this is not too offtopic, but this bothers me and my backup.

My backups are tar jobs in cron, eg:

20 23 * * *     tar -zcf /mnt/backupInternalHosts/backup/backup.tar.gz 
/etc /root /home && touch /tmp/state_backup-backup

This always sends me an unwanted email with:

tar: Removing leading `/' from member names

I consider this a bug because this informal message is printed to error out?

Ok, I rewrite my tar job to get around this:

tar -zc -f /mnt/backupInternalHosts/backup/backup.tar.gz -C / etc root 
home && touch /tmp/state_backup-backup

Fine this works, but problems arise when I try to exclude things 
(example under /tmp/foo):

$ mkdir dir1 dir2 dir1/dir2
$ touch dir1/dir2/importantFile
$ tar -cvf tarfile.tar --exclude=dir2 -C /tmp/foo/ dir1 dir2
dir1/

Because the exclude pattern matches under dir1 my important File is not 
backed up. The problem is, I cannot specify the exclude pattern to match 
only /tmp/foo/dir2 , can I?

Thx
Rainer

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Rainer Traut said the following on 15/03/11 10:25:
> This always sends me an unwanted email with:
> tar: Removing leading `/' from member names
Redirect the stdout/stderr to some file:

tar cvzf /mnt/mybackup.tgz /foo /bar > /var/log/backup 2>
/var/log/backuperrors
> Because the exclude pattern matches under dir1 my important File is not 
> backed up. The problem is, I cannot specify the exclude pattern to match 
> only /tmp/foo/dir2 , can I?
It's a matter of personal taste, but I find more useful the -X (or
- --exclude-from) option





Ciao,
luigi

- -- 
/
+--[Luigi Rosa]--
\

You cannot achieve the impossible without attempting the absurd.
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On 03/15/2011 10:25 AM, Rainer Traut wrote:
...
> tar: Removing leading `/' from member names
Add -P to include leading /

Mogens

-- 
Mogens Kjaer, mk at lemo.dk
http://www.lemo.dk

On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 5:25 AM, Rainer Traut <tr.ml at gmx.de>
wrote:
> Hi List,
>
> hope this is not too offtopic, but this bothers me and my backup.
>
> My backups are tar jobs in cron, eg:
>
> 20 23 * * * ? ? tar -zcf /mnt/backupInternalHosts/backup/backup.tar.gz
> /etc /root /home && touch /tmp/state_backup-backup
Try this:

     20 23 * * *     tar -zcf
/mnt/backupInternalHosts/backup/backup.tar.gz -C / etc root/home &&
touch /tmp/state_backup-backup

On 3/15/11 4:25 AM, Rainer Traut wrote:
> Hi List,
>
> hope this is not too offtopic, but this bothers me and my backup.
>
> My backups are tar jobs in cron, eg:
>
> 20 23 * * *     tar -zcf /mnt/backupInternalHosts/backup/backup.tar.gz
> /etc /root /home&&  touch /tmp/state_backup-backup
>
> This always sends me an unwanted email with:
>
> tar: Removing leading `/' from member names
>
> I consider this a bug because this informal message is printed to error
out?
Cd into the top directory and back up '.'.  Or above it and use the name
without
the leading /.  Absolute paths are a bad idea in backups and tar is correct in 
telling you that you made an error.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com