[lug] tar and symlinks

[Sean Reifschneider]

On Tue, Oct 29, 2002 at 04:56:33AM +0000, j davis wrote:
> So I did a backup to tape using the tar command. To test, I restored
>the /etc dir i backed up from tape to my home dir. I then did a diff
>and recived the output below. All the file are symlinks...so if i do
>a restore do i have to manually remake the symlinks?

Tar seems to be able to handle sym-links:

   guin:tmp$ mkdir tarfoo
   guin:tmp$ cd tarfoo
   /tmp/tarfoo
   guin:tarfoo$ date >file
   guin:tarfoo$ ln -s file symlink
   guin:tarfoo$ tar c . | tar xvv
   drwxr-xr-x jafo/jafo         0 2002-10-28 22:06:54 ./
   -rw-r--r-- jafo/jafo        29 2002-10-28 22:06:45 ./file
   lrwxrwxrwx jafo/jafo         0 2002-10-28 22:06:54 ./symlink -> file
   guin:tarfoo$ 

I presume that there were errors while restoring the tar which said why
the symlinks weren't getting restored, but that you didn't notice or
pass them on in your message...

Sean
-- 
 "The big bad wolf, he learned the rule.  You gotta get hot to play real cool."
Sean Reifschneider, Inimitably Superfluous <jafo at tummy.com>
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