RE: [Bug-tar] restoring from incremental question

[John McDole]

John R. Vanderpool:
>> Now, if you want to just untar with out having directories removed --
>just curious why did you say directories and not just files here?

I blame it on a quickly written response.  Many pages on the web have
the _wrong_ idea of what a 'back' should be.  A few pages I've read,
physically cringing, said "Use  --newer=DATE-OR-FILE to do differential
backups!"; which is wrong because files might get moved, in which case
their dates don't change (e.g. file "blue" gets moved/renamed to "red",
the websites procedure would never have a file "red").


John R. Vanderpool:
>> don't use the --listed-incremental option!  The file deleted on 
>> Tuesday will not be removed with the Wednesday morning restore.  This

>> is helpful when a user deletes a file accidentally and only a partial

>> restore is needed.
>ah, so you are saying this kicks in only if you use -x and
--listed-incremental at the same time, i thought it had something to do
with using it with >-c & --listed-incremental

Yes. If you never use "--listed-incremental" with extract, it will
operate like a normal tar file.  I agree that the info pages are a bit
confusing, only through previous knowledge of other backup systems and
experimentation did I learn that tar works just the way I want it! :-)

--
John Thomas McDole