Re: [Bug-tar] incremental backup won't recognise snar file from previous system

[Andrew Henry]

Sergey Poznyakoff wrote:

Henry Andrew <address@hidden> wrote:

  

Now, even though I have copied snar back to /var/log, using cp -p to
make sure that it retains it's original timestamp, my weekly backups are
backing up every file on /home, as if it is unable to recognise the snar
file.
    

What version of tar are you using now? The snapshot file format has
changed around version 1.15.90, previous tar versions will not
recognise it.

Regards,
Sergey


  

I replied to another post that I use 1.15.1 both before upgrading the OS and after reinstalled original OS after failed upgrade.  But you made me remember something.  Ubuntu released an upgrade to Tar recently.  I cannot remember exactly which day but it very well could have been during that week after I reinstalled butbefore I performed a new weekly upgrade.  Even though the version did not change, could a bug fix upgrade of Tar cause it to stop recognising the snar file from the previous version?

By the way, this is the command I use.  I copy the snar file to snar-2 to use with weekly backups so I can still perform multiple monthly backups by copying snar to snar-1 etc.  Scripts run as sudo:

Yearly Backup

rm -f /var/log/snar*
echo "Archiving files..."
tar -cvPWf \
    /home/backup-level0-yearly.tar \
    --listed-incremental /var/log/snar \
        /home/andrew/ \
        '/media/hda2/Documents and Settings/All Users/Documents/My Pictures/' \
        '/media/hda2/Documents and Settings/Tina/My Documents/' \
        '/media/hda2/Documents and Settings/Tina/Application Data/cbt/' \
        '/media/hda2/Documents and Settings/Tina/Application Data/GnuPG/' \
        '/media/hda2/Documents and Settings/Tina/Application Data/Mozilla/' \
        '/media/hda2/Documents and Settings/Tina/Application Data/Thunderbird/' \
            > /home/backup-level0-yearly.tar.log


Weekly Backup

cp -u /var/log/snar /var/log/snar-1
cp /var/log/snar-1 /var/log/snar-2
echo "Archiving files..."
tar -cvPWf \
    /home/backup-level2-weekly.tar \
    --listed-incremental /var/log/snar-2 \
        /home/andrew/ \
        '/media/hda2/Documents and Settings/All Users/Documents/My Pictures/' \
        '/media/hda2/Documents and Settings/Tina/My Documents/' \
        '/media/hda2/Documents and Settings/Tina/Application Data/cbt/' \
        '/media/hda2/Documents and Settings/Tina/Application Data/GnuPG/' \
        '/media/hda2/Documents and Settings/Tina/Application Data/Mozilla/' \
        '/media/hda2/Documents and Settings/Tina/Application Data/Thunderbird/' \
            > /home/backup-level2-weekly.tar.log