Tar Content – Compare Tar Content with Local Folder

diff()tar

I want to compare the content of a tar archive (backup of $HOME) with the content of my local $HOME to see whether there are files in the tar file which are not yet in the local filesystem.

What is the best way to do that?

I tried tar -dvf archive.tar * in $HOME already but the output is not really satisfying. It says tar: Videos: Not found in archive for some files and folders on the first directory level although they are in the archive and then it exits with tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors (exit code 2).

EDIT: It's on Ubuntu 10.04 and I'm quite familiar with the bash.

Best Answer

Try this:

tar -dvf example.tar

(in the directory with which you're comparing)

The -d is the same as --diff / --compare

More info: http://www.apl.jhu.edu/Misc/Unix-info/tar/tar_16.html and http://ss64.com/bash/tar.html

Related Solutions

Force tar to ignore/skip errors while compressing files

Your assumption is correct, "File changed as we read it" is a notice, usually related to files in use (i.e. written to during the creation process) while tar is creating the archive. If consistency is vital, you're better off rsyncing the contents elsewhere i.e.

rsync -avz /my/home/ /somebackupdir/my/home/  # initial sync, followed by 
rsync -avz /my/home/ /somebackupdir/my/home/  # any subsequent sync, repeated
                                              # as often as you feel necessary

This gives you the benefit of having a backup location that will only need to update the diffs before creating the tarball.

Shell command to filter out non-existing files in a pipe

Try use perl oneliner for this

cat filelist | perl -ne 'chomp(); if (-e $_) {print "$_\n"}' | tar -T- -zcvf backup.tar.gz

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Force tar to ignore/skip errors while compressing files

Shell command to filter out non-existing files in a pipe

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