tar question

[Steven W. Orr]

On Monday, Aug 2nd 2004 at 15:32 -0500, quoth Michael Sullivan:

=>I've set up a script that backs up the entire /home folder into a file
=>labeled with the computer name and the date the file was made.  This
=>works well, but takes up a lot of space, and only two days worth of
=>archives fit on a single CD.  I know how I want to remedy the situation,
=>but I don't know how to script it.  Here's what I want to do:  On Sunday
=>I want the whole /home folder backed up into its own file.  On Monday
=>through Saturday I want only the files that have changed since the last
=>backup backed up into their own files, one for each day.  That should
=>make seven files that are small enough to fit onto one CD.  One CD per
=>week.  Is it possible to do it this way, and if so, how would I do it?  
=>I do a lot of programming, so I need separate backup archives so that I
=>can access an older version of a particular file if need be...

See the info pages on tar. Look at the Incremental options.

   `--incremental' (`-G') is used in conjunction with `--create' (`-c'),
`--extract' (`--get', `-x') or `--list' (`-t') when backing up and
restoring file systems.  An archive cannot be extracted or listed with
the `--incremental' (`-G') option specified unless it was created with
the option specified.  This option should only be used by a script, not
by the user, and is usually disregarded in favor of
`--listed-incremental=SNAPSHOT-FILE' (`-g SNAPSHOT-FILE'), which is
described below.


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