Alright, so simple problem here. I'm working on a simple back up code. It works fine except if the files have spaces in them. This is how I'm finding files and adding them to a tar archive:
find . -type f | xargs tar -czvf backup.tar.gz
The problem is when the file has a space in the name because tar thinks that it's a folder. Basically is there a way I can add quotes around the results from find? Or a different way to fix this?
Use this:
find . -type f -print0 | tar -czvf backup.tar.gz --null -T -
It will:
- deal with files with spaces, newlines, leading dashes, and other funniness
- handle an unlimited number of files
- won't repeatedly overwrite your backup.tar.gz like using
tar -c
with xargs
will do when you have a large number of files
Also see:
- GNU tar manual
- How can I build a tar from stdin?, search for null
There could be another way to achieve what you want. Basically,
- Use the find command to output path to whatever files you're looking for. Redirect stdout to a filename of your choosing.
Then tar with the -T option which allows it to take a list of file locations (the one you just created with find!)
find . -name "*.whatever" > yourListOfFiles
tar -cvf yourfile.tar -T yourListOfFiles
Try running:
find . -type f | xargs -d "\n" tar -czvf backup.tar.gz
Why not:
tar czvf backup.tar.gz *
Sure it's clever to use find and then xargs, but you're doing it the hard way.
Update: Porges has commented with a find-option that I think is a better answer than my answer, or the other one: find -print0 ... | xargs -0 ....
If you have multiple files or directories and you want to zip them into independent *.gz
file you can do this. Optional -type f -atime
find -name "httpd-log*.txt" -type f -mtime +1 -exec tar -vzcf {}.gz {} \;
This will compress
httpd-log01.txt
httpd-log02.txt
to
httpd-log01.txt.gz
httpd-log02.txt.gz
Why not give something like this a try: tar cvf scala.tar `find src -name *.scala`
Another solution as seen here:
find var/log/ -iname "anaconda.*" -exec tar -cvzf file.tar.gz {} +
The best solution seem to be to create a file list and then archive files because you can use other sources and do something else with the list.
For example this allows using the list to calculate size of the files being archived:
#!/bin/sh
backupFileName="backup-big-$(date +"%Y%m%d-%H%M")"
backupRoot="/var/www"
backupOutPath=""
archivePath=$backupOutPath$backupFileName.tar.gz
listOfFilesPath=$backupOutPath$backupFileName.filelist
#
# Make a list of files/directories to archive
#
echo "" > $listOfFilesPath
echo "${backupRoot}/uploads" >> $listOfFilesPath
echo "${backupRoot}/extra/user/data" >> $listOfFilesPath
find "${backupRoot}/drupal_root/sites/" -name "files" -type d >> $listOfFilesPath
#
# Size calculation
#
sizeForProgress=`
cat $listOfFilesPath | while read nextFile;do
if [ ! -z "$nextFile" ]; then
du -sb "$nextFile"
fi
done | awk '{size+=$1} END {print size}'
`
#
# Archive with progress
#
## simple with dump of all files currently archived
#tar -czvf $archivePath -T $listOfFilesPath
## progress bar
sizeForShow=$(($sizeForProgress/1024/1024))
echo -e "\nRunning backup [source files are $sizeForShow MiB]\n"
tar -cPp -T $listOfFilesPath | pv -s $sizeForProgress | gzip > $archivePath