Re: tar cvfz test.tar.gz / gives error while untaring

[CW Harris <charris@rtcmarketing.com>]

On Sun, Feb 29, 2004 at 09:33:48PM +0100, Oliver Fuchs wrote:
> On Sun, 29 Feb 2004, s. keeling wrote:
> 
<snip>
> >    cd /
> >    tar cvzf /somewhere/test.tgz .
> >    cd /somewhere
> >    tar tvzf test.tgz
> > 
> > Note the "."  btw, tarring the whole root dir will tar the entire
> > filesystem, including everything that's mounted off the root
> > filesystem.  man tar to find out how not to do that.
> 
> Yes surely, I did a lot of --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/dev ... that was not the
> problem.
> 
> What I do not understand is:
> I am in directory /home/me/TAR_EXAMPLE
> Now I want to tar directory /tmp for example then I do
> 
> tar cvzf temp.test.tar.gz /tmp
> 
> Afterwards I receive in the directory /home/me/TAR_EXAMPLE the archive
> temp.test.tar.gz which can be untared without any problems.
> 
> But ... trying to do
> 
> tar cvzf root.test.tar.gz / --exclude=home --exclude=/dev
> 
> I receive the archive root.test.tar.gz in directory /home/me/TAR_EXAMPLE
> but trying to untar it gives me the mkdir-error-message.
> 
> Why is tar not processing the / directory like any other directory and why is
> it adding a / when tar xvzf cannot untar it?
> 
> So the conclusion would be that trying to tar the / directory I have to cd
> into that directory to make it working while with any other directory I can
> start the tar-process from where ever I want?
> 
I don't think it should do that without the "-P" switch.  What version
are you running?  My quick check (as root or not was the same):

	Script started on Sun Feb 29 14:59:32 2004
	chris:~>  tar cvzf root.tgz / 
	tar: Removing leading `/' from member names
	tar: 
	lost+found/
	root/
	.
	.
	.

I'm using:
	tar (GNU tar) 1.13.25
	Copyright (C) 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

-- 
Chris Harris <charris@rtcmarketing.com>
Linux --- The best things in life are free!