by Does anyone know how new listed incremental backups (the -g or --listed-
incremental option) are supposed to work in GNU tar?
Exploring it with test data (a few directories), I thought I had figured out
how to use it. However, when I use it for real (on my whole directory tree),
it doesn't work.
To create a full backup to be suitable as the basis for incremental backup,
I run tar with the -g option, giving a non-existent file name. On test
data, this appears to work fine: tar copies all files to tape, and creates a
tar data file containing one line with some number (a time, I assume) plus one
line for each subdirectory (the subdirectory name plus two numbers, I have
no idea what).
To incrementally back up changes, I run tar again with the -g option, giving
the name of the tar data file created above. Again, this works fine on test
data. (That is, it seems to back yp only new or changed files.)
However, when I try to back up for real, tar doesn't create the tar data file
correctly. I get a data file containing only the first line (the apparent
timestamp); no directories are listed. Then when I try to do an incremental
backup, it starts backing up everything again (apparently, because nothing is
listed in the data file as having been backed up already).
(I don't think this is a tar bug, because it has worked before on real data.)
Does anyone know how the GNU tar listed incremental backups feature works
and how it is intended to be used?
I'd RTFM if there were any f***ing documentation, but at least on Slackware
2.1 (Morse Tel. CD) the documentation sucks: The manual page says only:
-g, --listed-incremental F
create/list/extract new GNU-format incremental backup.
and info page is out of date - it doesn't even list the -g option (only an
older -G option).
Even for old incremental backups, though the out-of-date info. page does
explain the purpose and some of the mechanism of old incremental backups,
it never explains _how_ to use tar to do them. (That is, what to do with the
data file: what to do to do a full backup, what to do to do an increment
based on a full backup, what to do to do an increment based on the previous
increment, etc.)
(Please also e-mail any response. I'll be away from news for a while.)
Thanks,
Daniel
--
Daniel S. Barclay Compass Design Automation, Inc.
"They listen hard, and act like they care.
How can they be so completely unaware
Of the truth? The answer is always denied me
So I introduce 'em to the killer inside me." - MC 900 Ft. Jesus