Is there a way to use Tar (not GNU) to automaticallly create a tar file on a remote machine. the source files will be local, but I would like tthe tar file to be remote.

Thanks.

tar doesn't support this directly, and neither would any sane archiver. Your question boils down to "how do I send files to another machine?"

A couple options:

• tar the files, then ftp the tar file onto the other machine.
• Mount a directory on the target machine onto your own using something like nfs or samba, then create the archive in that.
• Stream the file over a network socket somehow, so that it never needs to exist locally. I built a hack to do this once, and don't reccomend it's use, but it shows how to use tar as a stream.

$ tar --rsh-command=`which ssh` -zcvf remote_host:filename.tar.gz -- directory_to_tar

Single line solution, not a hack, part of tar. Works even if you don't have enough space to create the archive on the local machine. use -jcvf and filename.tar.bz2 if you want a little better compression. Data is sent securely over the wire, assuming you have SSH setup correctly.

man tar is your friend. Boosh!