Re: [Bug-tar] gnu tar incremental backup saves unchanged directories

[Sergey Poznyakoff]

Todd Brunhoff <address@hidden> ha escrit:

> While writing yet another backup script using tar
> --listed-incremental, I found that there was no option to prevent
> archiving directories that had no changes.

Tar should detect whether directory changed and not archive it if it
has not.  That's what incremental mode is for.  

> I see this as a problem
> because when doing an incremental backup of a system with 10's of
> thousands of directories, yet where only a few files have changed, all
> of the directories are archived.

Can you give some more details on how you invoke tar so that I can
reproduce the bug.

> I should note a related irritation. If the find found no files, tar
> would archive everything in the current directory.

Again, it is hard to tell what the matter was without seeing the actual
command line options used.

> but there is no way to say to take files only
> from the --files-from argument.

Yes, there is: don't specify explicit file name arguments on the command
line.

Regards,
Sergey