question about tar -N
 

I'm puzzled by how tar -N option works.

I tried many date formats and eventually found one that tar seemed happy
with, yet it didn't just archive the files that were newer than the
given date but also included some older files. I've tried -N, --newer, and
--after-date. The man page says that you can use a date or a
filename, and I have tried both.

I'm trying to set up a system for archiving *.flac and other music files.
When I run tar with a date option or a filename it seems to ignore *.jpg and
*.pdf files that are older than the given date (as expected) but it
includes some flac files in the tarball even though they are older than the
date.

Is there another version of tar, other than that included with Ubuntu, that
does work, or am I trying to use it incorrectly? I just want a tarball of
files (flac, mp3, jpg, pdf, ...whatever) that are newer than a particular
file (a pretty basic requirement). I know that --newer works with find, but
if there's a working tar option I'd rather just use that.

One command I tried was:-
tar --newer=./newones.txt --exclude-from="exclude.tar" -vcf
test.tar /media/audio/*

This dumped
2011-02-06
12:47 /media/audio/16bit/beethoven/diabelli/331369-66763-01-20.flac
but not
2011-08-10 12:37 /media/audio/16bit/saint_saens/saint_saens.flac
which it reported as unchanged.
Surely they should both have been reported as unchanged?

newones.txt is dated 2011-08-18 00:00

Any help would be appreciated.

- Richard
--
Richard Kimber
Political Science Resources
http://www.PoliticsResources.net/

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question about tar -N
 

On Sat, 2011-08-20 at 17:42 +0100, R Kimber wrote:
> I'm puzzled by how tar -N option works.
>
> I tried many date formats and eventually found one that tar seemed happy
> with, yet it didn't just archive the files that were newer than the
> given date but also included some older files. I've tried -N, --newer, and
> --after-date. The man page says that you can use a date or a
> filename, and I have tried both.
>
> I'm trying to set up a system for archiving *.flac and other music files.
> When I run tar with a date option or a filename it seems to ignore *.jpg and
> *.pdf files that are older than the given date (as expected) but it
> includes some flac files in the tarball even though they are older than the
> date.
>
> Is there another version of tar, other than that included with Ubuntu, that
> does work, or am I trying to use it incorrectly?

Someone else may be able to help you with the -N switch, but as to are
there other options, I started at some point using bsdtar in place of
tar as it automatically recognized the compression format used when
extracting. That was useful for me at the time. TAR may do that as well
nowadays. But I suggest you give bsdtar a go. The --newer and
--newer-mtime (and --newer-than file and --newer-mtime-than file)
switches should work as advertised based on my experience.

Tero



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question about tar -N
 

On 08/20/2011 09:42 AM, R Kimber wrote:
> I'm puzzled by how tar -N option works.
>
> I tried many date formats and eventually found one that tar seemed happy
> with, yet it didn't just archive the files that were newer than the
> given date but also included some older files. I've tried -N, --newer, and
> --after-date. The man page says that you can use a date or a
> filename, and I have tried both.
>
> I'm trying to set up a system for archiving *.flac and other music files.
> When I run tar with a date option or a filename it seems to ignore *.jpg and
> *.pdf files that are older than the given date (as expected) but it
> includes some flac files in the tarball even though they are older than the
> date.
...
I'm not familiar with 'tar -N' either. But what I gather is that 'tar
-N' associated with the file modification date. Could this be what you
are running into?

Otherwise look at:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/tar
and try asking on:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/tar




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question about tar -N
 

On Sat, 20 Aug 2011 20:14:40 +0300
Tero Pesonen wrote:

> Someone else may be able to help you with the -N switch, but as to are
> there other options, I started at some point using bsdtar in place of
> tar as it automatically recognized the compression format used when
> extracting. That was useful for me at the time. TAR may do that as well
> nowadays. But I suggest you give bsdtar a go. The --newer and
> --newer-mtime (and --newer-than file and --newer-mtime-than file)
> switches should work as advertised based on my experience.

Thanks. I've looked at that but it doesn't seem to have a 'read exclusions
from an external file' option, which I'd also like.

- Richard
--
Richard Kimber
Political Science Resources
http://www.PoliticsResources.net/

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question about tar -N
 

On Sat, 20 Aug 2011 21:11:37 -0700
NoOp wrote:

> I'm not familiar with 'tar -N' either. But what I gather is that 'tar
> -N' associated with the file modification date. Could this be what you
> are running into?
>
> Otherwise look at:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/tar
> and try asking on:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/tar

Thanks. In the interest of getting the script working quickly I think
I'd better go with a less elegant solution and use 'find' to create a list
of new files and then use tar.

- Richard.
--
Richard Kimber
Political Science Resources
http://www.PoliticsResources.net/

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question about tar -N
 

On 08/20/2011 11:42 AM, R Kimber wrote:

[snip]



One command I tried was:-
tar --newer=./newones.txt --exclude-from="exclude.tar" -vcf
test.tar /media/audio/*

This dumped
2011-02-06
12:47 /media/audio/16bit/beethoven/diabelli/331369-66763-01-20.flac
but not
2011-08-10 12:37 /media/audio/16bit/saint_saens/saint_saens.flac
which it reported as unchanged.
Surely they should both have been reported as unchanged?

newones.txt is dated 2011-08-18 00:00

Any help would be appreciated.

- Richard


What are the ctimes for those files?

Use "stat" or "ls -l --time=status" I think that tar compares ctime
rather than mtime here.


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