UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I am trying to create a tarball of a directory for backup purposes. There are some files that are not being added to the tar as a result of lack of R/W permissions with my account. I can see some of these files echoed to the screen. I want to take only the files that are not copying over and add them to a file. Can anybody help with this?

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

If the filenames are sent to stderr, you can use capture that output to a file and parse it later.

Code:

tar -czvf filename.tar.gz ./* 2>> tar_errors.log

Thanks for your reply.

After running this command, it seems that all of the errors:

"tar: Cannot add file <filename>: Permission denied"

All files that copy correctly are added to the output file. I want this reversed. Make sense?

Thanks again for any help.

Okay, then if that log file contains errors in the same format each time, then you can just grep the lines containing the error, parse the filenames you need, and process them separately.

Something like:

Code:

tar -czvf filename.tar.gz files_to_backup 2> error.log && fgrep 'Permission denied' error.log | <something>

Where <something> would be replaced by your script or whatever you use to strip out the file names and then send them to xargs or something.

It seems that no matter what I try, only the files that are successfully added to the tarball are sent to the results file. All of the files that are not added due to "Permission Denied" errors are sent to the screen and are not added to the results file.

Please post the command you are entering. It sounds like you're redirecting stdout rather than stderr. Are you entering a number 2 before your redirection arrow?

ShawnMilo,

Thanks for your constant help.

I was using your first command:
tar -cvf <tarname> ./* 2>> tarResults.txt

All files that are added to the tarfile end up in tarResults.txt. All files that don't copy in there are only shown on the screen.