Re: Need advice on baking up files

[Steve Holdoway]

Volker Kuhlmann wrote:
tar -czvf $TarFile \
/home/user1/.Maildir/  \
/home/user2/.Maildir/  \
/home/user3/.Maildir/ 
   

tar -czvf $TarFile /home/user[1-3]/.Maildir/
or if the user names are very different
tar -czvf $TarFile /home/{user1,user2,user3}/.Maildir/
As I said, use shell globs.
Volker
 

Note that GNU tar will only store relative pathnames - ie will remove 
the leading '/'. This is a good thing (tm), as it means that you can 
restore the files to somewhere else, and don't have to take steps to 
overwrite the original files.

Also, if you're using the v flag (the '-' is optional) then I'd save the 
output to a logfile. This can then be quickly used as an index to the 
archive. I have also had the backup seriously slowed down by the 
necessity to display the filenames as they are secured ( but that was 
HP-UX to a 19,200 baud serial console backing up to DLT ). Can't 
remember at this moment, but I *think* filenames are written to stderr, 
so add something like 2>backup.log (for bash users ) to the command line.

Steve