John Doe wrote:
From: Akemi Yagi amyagi@gmail.com
On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 3:16 PM, Neil Aggarwal wrote:
Hello:
I tried this command to tar up a set of data files updated since yesterday (The data directory contains multiple files with varying dates):
/bin/tar -z -c -N 2009-03-25 -f /tmp/test.tgz data
When I look at the content of the test.tgz file, it looks like it copied the content of the entire directory, not just the newer files.
I am on CentOS 5.
Try --newer-mtime instead of -N. In my case (CentOS-4 backup machine), the -N option did not work as it's supposed to. Not sure about tar on CentOS-5 though.
I like the distinction in the man page...
-N, --after-date DATE, --newer DATE only store files newer than DATE --newer-mtime DATE like --newer, but with a DATETranslation: --newer-mtime DATE is like --newer DATE, but with a DATE... ^_^
The difference is supposed to be that --newer-mtime uses mtime and the others use ctime for the file timestamp check.
But, there's an old saying that when the code and the documentation differ they are probably both wrong...
If you want finer-grained control you should use the --listed-incremental FILE option anyway. If the file doesn't exist, you get a full run and the file is created containing a list of directories traversed. If you specify an existing file, you get an incremental containing newer files plus everything under directories not listed from the previous run - and the file is re-written in place for a next-level incremental. If you want multiple incrementals base from the full you have to save a copy of this file before each incremental for subsequent use. This is the only way to catch older files in their new locations under renamed directories - and it also triggers the mode that permits the restore option of deleting files that weren't present during the run (without it you can run out of space when restoring a series of incrementals).
--- Les Mikesell lesmikesell@gmail.com