UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi All,

I have tried so many command but none work like i wanted.

I would like archive which i assume it will move the files and archive it somewhere.

for example:

if i have a folder and files:
/home/blah/test
/home/blah/hello
/home/blah/foo/bar

i would like to archive folder blah which including the subfolder.
i use gtar -czf backup.tar.gz blah

but it does not actually move the files "test" and "hello" and "bar"

Is there any way to archive specific files inside directory/subdirectory but actually also move the files to the archive file but i would like to keep the dir structure as well?

please help any advise..

How about if you try

Code:

 
gtar -czf backup.tar.gz blah/*

Nb: But the files are not moved. The archive will have a copy of the files but they will still exist in /home/blah/...

Hi Vi-Curious,

It does the same as
gtar -czf backup.tar.gz blah

it does not move the files in the source but making a copy instead.

It is not going to move the files, ever. If you want the files moved, you need to move them. And where do you want them moved to or do you really just want them deleted? I don't think I understand what you want to happen.

As for my previous post, I guess I misunderstood you there as well. I thought you were saying that gtar did not put the files (located in the subdirectory) into the archive file. It should, without the /*, but I thought you were saying it didn't.

Ok..

What i'm trying to do is:
I have many files that our company don't use anymore but i need to keep it up to 10 yrs..
What i want is to archive all those files to a separate harddrive/partition.
if i use gtar -czf backup.tar.gz blah, it will give me a copy of those files to different location which i don't want that.
i would like to take all those files away from source to destination but specific files only..

I still don't understand your resistance to using the gtar archive. If you have files in some source directory that you want archived and stored in some destination, you can gtar the files to be archived, put the gtar file in the destination, and delete the files from the source directory. By using gtar, you are compressing the archived files so that they don't take as much disk space.

If, however, you really don't want to bother with the compressed archive file, you can just use mv to move the files where you want them.

The main question, then, is how do you identify which files you need to archive? What is the criteria?

Sorry if I'm stating the obvious here, but GNU tar has an option --remove-files to delete archived files.