Thanks very much! In the meantime I've come across this, which apparently is the correct way to use tar for incremental "backups": http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_node/tar_88.html#SEC88 Anyt thoughts on what that page indicates? I just can't afford to screw this one up, so it's very important that I get it right! Thanks. -----Original Message----- From: redhat-list-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx [mailto:redhat-list-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Herta Van den Eynde Sent: 25 November 2007 23:45 To: General Red Hat Linux discussion list Subject: Re: tar --newer-mtime On 25/11/2007, Johan Booysen <johan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Dear all, > > Apologies if this is a silly question, but it's important enough for me > to ask as a double-check: > > I want to do a once-off "incremental backup" of a server, in such a way > that I create a tar archive of only data files that have been created or > have been modified since a defined date. > > Will this do the trick, for example? > > tar -cvf incremental.tar --newer-mtime "24 Now 2007" * > > I.e. only tar up files that have been CREATED or MODIFIED since > 24.11.2007... > > Thanks. > Linux doesn't record the creation date. What you can get is: atime = the last time the file was opened for read mtime = the last time the file was closed after it was opened for write ctime = the time the inode information was updated (e.g. as a result of a chmod or chown --newer-mtime will only tar files whose mtime has changed. Better to use --after-date, which will tar both files whose mtime or ctime has changed. Kind regards, Herta -- redhat-list mailing list unsubscribe mailto:redhat-list-request@xxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list -- redhat-list mailing list unsubscribe mailto:redhat-list-request@xxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
