UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

TIA,

I'm using FreeBSD 6

I have a series of Directories (A,B,C,...Z). Each directory has files and other directories within it.

I want to compress the contents of each top directory into a single file so that I get an archive of each directory (for example, A.gzip) AND and want to move that compressed file to another volume on the system.

I have managed to be able to gzip the contents of each directory, but end up with a complete directory structure full of .gzips.

Looking on here I see that tar appears to be able to create the single-file archives I want, but I cannot tell if tar will compress and combine the files AND put the finished results on the other volume.

Ideas? Thanks again,

johnC

tar wont compress but will create an archive, you just have to gzip it after and you will find yourself with a <my_archive>.tar.gzip file
easy no?

Thanks, but how do I get all that into one command?

"Hi there, tar! Will you please make an archive of Volume_Source/Directory_A, then gzip it for me and save the results on Volume_Target/?"

would this work:

Code:

tar -czf /Volumes/Volume_Target/A.tar.gz /Volumes/Volume_Source/Directory_A

?

Does your implementation of "tar" have a -z flag? If yes, then the above should work.

Thanks for the confirmation. I tried it when I got home last night and it did work. Now I just need to find a way to automate this command to run on each directory individually. I mean, tar and gzip Directory A to Volume B, then tar and gzip directory B to Volume B, then tar and gzip Directory C to Volume B and so on.... Is this a shell script thing? I have tried to understand the various options under tar or gzip but I don't see that sort of intelligence in the options....

TIA,

johnC

Yes this is a shell script thing...
You will need a loop:

Code:

something like
for i in A B C D...
do
   cd  $i
   tar -c ...
done