Question

Create a tar file of a dirctory on remote server keeping file structure and permissions

Asked by: alanaldis

As the title suggest I need to make a tar file of a directory (forum) keeping all the file structures and file and folder permissions.

Could someone please tell me what I should use.

Many thanks.

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Asked On
2009-10-02 at 04:49:17ID24779858
Topics

Web Servers

,

SSH / Telnet Software

,

Linux

Participating Experts
3
Points
500
Comments
5

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Answers

 

by: PeteEngineerPosted on 2009-10-02 at 04:56:22ID: 25476990

Create tar files:

cd /folder_to_backup
tar --exclude='./folder' --exclude='./upload/folder2' -zcvf /backup/filename.tgz .


Copy tar files from extenrnal server:

http://www.joomlabrothers.com/content/view/7/

 

by: JetPacPosted on 2009-10-02 at 08:25:17ID: 25478813

If you can SSH from your source machine to your destination:

Assuming your source folder is /data/myfolder, and you wish to copy to /newdata/myfolder on the second machine:

Log into the machine you wish to copy from:

cd /data
tar cpf - myfolder  | ssh destination.machine.com  " (cd /newdata ; tar xpf -)"

This will tar up the folder you wish to copy, preserving permission information, pipe it into an SSH connection to your remote machine, where the stream is untarred into /newdata.


 

by: uaynebPosted on 2009-10-02 at 11:48:06ID: 25480820

Do you want to create a tar file or do you want to copy the directory?  

if just tar, then
tar cvpf tarfile.tar [folder]

Make sure to use the "p" option as that "p"reserves everything like symbolic links, etc.

If you want to make an actual copy to another box, you can just tar then untar or do it the fancier way the JetPac recommends (which is a very awesome way of copying directories locally or remotely instead of just using "cp")

 

by: alanaldisPosted on 2009-10-02 at 12:19:13ID: 31636335

Thanks guys both work out great.

 

by: uaynebPosted on 2009-10-02 at 14:28:01ID: 25482426

p.s. the -p option most importantly (for me at least) preserves modification time on a file.

e.g. if you do a cp /etc/httpd/httpd.conf /etc/httpd/httpd.conf.1
httpd.conf.1 has a modification time of when the file is copied, not usually what you want
cp -p /etc/httpd/httpd.conf /etc/httpd/httpd.conf.1
httpd.conf.1 has a modification time that matches the /etc/httpd/httpd.conf

tar, same thing.. just make sure that when you untar you also use the "p" option

Glad it worked

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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