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

[Oliver Fuchs <oliverfuchs@onlinehome.de>]

On Sun, 29 Feb 2004, Travis Crump wrote:

> From my tests that error doesn't appear to be fatal and can be ignored.

My version of tar is (GNU tar) 1.13.25.

Yes, I also think that this error can be ignored because the rest of the
archive is correctly untared.

But to be honest I cannot find an explicit rule neither in the manpages nor
in the info file which says that you have to cd to a superior directory to
archive a directory. The only thing I found was in the info gnu (it was the
tutorial):

   [...]
     To archive a directory, first move to its superior directory.  If you
     have followed the previous instructions in this tutorial, you should
     type:
   [...]
     This will put you into the directory which contains `practice',
     i.e. your home directory.  Once in the superior directory, you can
     specify the subdirectory, `practice', as a file name argument.  To
     store `practice' in the new archive file `music.tar', type:
     If you give `tar' a command such as
     $ tar --create --file=foo.tar .
     `tar' will report `tar: ./foo.tar is the archive; not dumped'.  This
     happens because `tar' creates the archive `foo.tar' in the current
      directory before putting any files into it.
   [...]

But how can I move to the superior directory of / ?

Thanx to all who have answered and spent their time helping me.

I do now:
tar cvzf /mnt/somehow/test.tar.gz . --exclude=mnt --exclude=proc

So, thanx to all

Oliver
-- 
... don't touch the bang bang fruit