Hello Friends With the purpose to do a correct backup for the LiveDemo directory (any name as you want) consider the following directory structure: /home/you/LiveDemo aaa bbb ccc .git Where: The aaa, bbb and ccc are directories The .git is a hidden directory The following command was execu…

This ànswers the question about ‘*’ and ‘.’ [image] Using the CLI to backup or copy a Linux system Tutorials & Resources This is a joint post by @kovacslt and @nevj and Using the CLI to backup or copy a Linux system There are several programs commonly used…

[image] Manuel Jordan: It seems that if the . wildcard is applied then is mandatory do the pack approach outside of the directory target Yes. You cant have any active writing going on in the directory you are archiving. So, dont put the tarfile in there, and watch out for other processes wr…

Yes. Thanks for the confirmation. Therefore interesting the behavior between tar -czf LiveDemo.tar.gz . and tar -czf LiveDemo.tar.gz aaa bbb ccc It about the where (and why) to execute the command You cant have any active writing going on in the directory you are archiving. Understood So…

[image] Manuel Jordan: ? (v is included now) OK … so you can see if it is misbehaving.

[image] Neville Jackson: so you can see if it is misbehaving Wasn’t there a dry-run option, like in rsync? I cannot find it…

It’s confusing… I know… But in my experience - “/*” as the source in a tar command - will still pickup “.” files… But I almost, always, universally do : tar tvpf $TAR-DESTINATION * when the job’s finished… And I NEVER EVER EVER blindly untar a tar file before I’ve examined its contents… I’ve b…

[image] Alfred Bühler: Wasn’t there a dry-run option, like in rsync? I cannot find it Looks like it does not have --dry-run Direct the output to /dev/null

[image] Dan Tripp: UNIX design was so beautiful - and elegant That is what grabbed me. It was created by some very talented people.

Hello Friends As an advance about the .tar.gz creation One Command being executed outside of the LiveDemo directory (the one as backup) Any as tar -czf ~/Backups/LiveDemo.tar.gz ~/LiveDemo/ tar -czf ~/Backups/LiveDemo.tar.gz ~/LiveDemo Where always appears the following message tar: Removing…

Trying to accomplish a correct backup with the "tar" command

Shell Scripting & Linux CLI

nevj (Neville Jackson) 30 April 2026 16:16 2

This ànswers the question about ‘*’ and ‘.’

Are you saving the .tar.gz file inside the same folder you are trying to archive.?

Maybe the same as above
Maybe the filesystem blocksize differs in ‘other machine’