-1

I have a few sub-directories with files inside each of them in /home/user/archived/myFiles that I'm trying to bundle into a single tar file. The issue is, it keeps bundling a full directory path instead of just everything in the myFiles folder.

When I untar the file, I just want all the bundled sub-directories/files inside to appear in the directory I extracted the file rather than having to go through a series of folders that get created.

Instead, when I currently untar the file, I get a "home" folder and I have to go through /home/user/archived/myFiles to reach all the files.

I tried using the -C flag that I saw suggested online here Tar a directory, but don't store full absolute paths in the archive where you insert parameters for the full directory minus the last folder, and then the name of the last folder which contains all the stuff you want bundled. But the tar command doesn't work as I get a no such file or directory error.

#!/bin/bash

archivedDir="/home/user/archived/myFiles"

tar -czvf "archived-files.tar.gz" "${archivedDir}"/*

rm -vrf "${archivedDir}"/*

# Attempt with -C flag
#tar -cvf "${archivedDir}/archived-files.tar.gz" -C "${archivedDir}" "/*"

So for example, if I did an ls on /home/user/archived/myFiles, and it listed two directories called folderOne and folderTwo, and I ran this bash script and did an ls on /home/user/archived/myFiles again, that directory should only contain archived-files.tar.gz.

If I extracted the tar file, then folderOne and folderTwo would appear.

steveo
  • 51
  • 5
  • 1
    Don't tar `/home/user/archived/myFiles` instead cd to `/home/user/archived/myFiles` and tar `.` so that it uses a relative path from there. – Jerry Jeremiah Aug 02 '22 at 01:31

1 Answers1

0

As I explain already here you should first change to this directory and then create the archive. So change you script to something like:

archivedDir="/home/user/archived/myFiles"
cd $archivedDir
tar -czvf "../archived-files.tar.gz" *

This will create the archive in upper directory so you will not remove it with the next command.
the extraction should be something like:

archivedDir="/home/user/archived/myFiles"
cd $archivedDir
tar -xzvf "../archived-files.tar.gz"
Romeo Ninov
  • 6,538
  • 1
  • 22
  • 31