[plug] Help with tar

[Brad Campbell]

Brad Campbell wrote:
> 
> G'evening all
> This one has me screaming with pain..
> I am trying to copy the contents of one laptops
> hard disk to another laptop, via a server, as I only
> have one pcmcia network card..
> 
> Trying
> tar --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/proc --exclude=/var/log/wtmp -cpvzf
> /mnt/laptop.tgz /
> 
> When I uncompress on the other box, with a
> tar -xvpzf /mnt/laptop.tgz
> All the files have the corret uid/gid, but all the dirs are
> uid/gid 0 (which is the uid/gid I'm running from)
> I have tried --same-owner and --force-numeric
> and lots of permutations of the above..
> Even tried creating a V7 tar archive and uncompressing
> with a cat /mnt/laptop.tgz | zcat | star
> which are utils in the debian slink rescue disks...
> 
> Helllllpppppppppp................
> 
> Yours in frustration.....
>
Alright, I have it pegged..
GNU Tar 1.12 which i have on my slink boxes screws up the
dir permissions when it restores the archive..
star, which is on the debian slink resuce disk can't handle
a multi-root archive..
so I had to tar up each dir individually..
ie
tar -xpvzf /mnt/root.tgz /root
tar -xpvzf /mnt/usr.tgz /usr
and so on.. 
this worked a treat..
until I rebooted and realised I had forgotten to do /var
the system gets upset if it tries to boot and /var is missing..
so Tar it up, split it into 1.4mb files and copy it across on
floppy disks, cat it back together again and run it thru
zcat | star to extract it.. <whew>

I learned a little bit more about linux tonight...

Hope this may help someone in the future...

-- 
Brad....
"The ultimate result is that some innovations that would
truly benefit consumers never occur for the sole reason
that they do not conincide with Microsoft's self-interest"
- Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson
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