[CentOS] tar with -N option still picking up old files

Fri Mar 27 10:44:25 UTC 2009
John Doe <jdmls at yahoo.com>

From: Akemi Yagi <amyagi at 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 DATE

Translation: --newer-mtime DATE is like --newer DATE, but with a DATE...  ^_^

JD