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Article #596

Tar 1.07 -N flag

#596
From: ian
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 1990 11:08
19 lines
1286 bytes
I was bitten by the tar -N flag the other day. I was upgrading my OS
and I thought I could save all my changed files (/etc/passwd,
/etc/inittab etc etc) by:

 cd /; tar -clf /usr/new.files -N <installation date> .

This failed because the system had been saved and restored several
times and tar effectively uses the most recent of the file
modification time (mtime) and the inode change time (ctime). Restoring
from a tar, cpio or dump file updates ctime.

I understand why tar uses this criteria, it means that files whose
access permissions or ownership have changed get archived. It is
unfortunate that tar cannot restore ctime when extracting files (but
that is an OS limitation).

However, I think I had a natural and resonably frequent use for the
-N flag so how about, a) documenting the behaviour a little more clearly
and b) yet another flag which means files whose mtime is > date.
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!sibyl.eleceng.ua.oz.au!ian

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From: ian@sibyl.eleceng.ua.oz.au
Newsgroups: gnu.utils.bug
Subject: Tar 1.07  -N flag
Message-ID: <9001151532.23205@munnari.oz.au>
Date: 15 Jan 90 11:08:13 GMT
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Distribution: gnu
Organization: GNUs Not Usenet
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