Linux tar archive without parent structure

linuxtar

I'm trying to modify a certain tar.gz archive I have.
When I go to create the tar, it retains the parent directory structure, as a tarball should. However, is there a way to simply create a tar archive with just the files I specifiy, rather than the entire directory tree?

Best Answer

Disabling recursion in tar.

POSIX pax(1) has -d option which enables cpio-like interface while allowing to create .tar files. Example from Wikipedia:

find . -depth -print | pax -wd > archive.tar

GNU tar(1) has an analogous option, --no-recursion. Example from there:

find dir tests | tar -cf archive -T - --no-recursion

P.S. I usually fall back to cpio(1) in such cases.

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Linux – Why does “tar -cSf file.tar source” run out of memory

-S is doing some checking for sparse files (those where not all file extents are actually physically allocated on disk). This could possibly be running out of memory. Try running it without the -S (compress it if you really want) and see if this fixes the problem.

tar cf foo.tar *

tar czf foo.tar.gz *

Linux – Copying a large directory tree locally? cp or rsync

I would use rsync as it means that if it is interrupted for any reason, then you can restart it easily with very little cost. And being rsync, it can even restart part way through a large file. As others mention, it can exclude files easily. The simplest way to preserve most things is to use the -a flag – ‘archive.’ So:

rsync -a source dest

Although UID/GID and symlinks are preserved by -a (see -lpgo), your question implies you might want a full copy of the filesystem information; and -a doesn't include hard-links, extended attributes, or ACLs (on Linux) or the above nor resource forks (on OS X.) Thus, for a robust copy of a filesystem, you'll need to include those flags:

rsync -aHAX source dest # Linux
rsync -aHE source dest  # OS X

The default cp will start again, though the -u flag will "copy only when the SOURCE file is newer than the destination file or when the destination file is missing". And the -a (archive) flag will be recursive, not recopy files if you have to restart and preserve permissions. So:

cp -au source dest

Best Answer

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Linux – Why does “tar -cSf file.tar source” run out of memory

Linux – Copying a large directory tree locally? cp or rsync

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