Re: Problem with GNU tar version 1.13.25

[Stepan Kasal]

Hello,
        thank you for your bug report.

On Mon, Mar 31, 2003 at 11:42:19PM -0500, Wayne Pollock wrote:
>  cd /etc; find . -print0 | tar -cz --null -T - -f /tmp/foo.tgz

I think tar contains no bug, it's a misunderstanding of the
command.  Let me explain by an example:

the easiest way to archive the contents of /etc would be this:
        cd /etc; tar -czf /tmp/foo.tgz .
tar archives the directory recursively.

The above command is a superset of the following:
        cd /etc; tar -czf /tmp/foo.tgz . ./mail ./mail/sendmail.mc
which archives whole /etc first (including /etc/mail/sendmail.mc),
then whole /etc/mail and finally the individual file sendmail.mc
again.  So the file gets archived three times.

One has to be careful when combining find with tar.

HTH,
        Stepan Kasal