Tar a directory but don t store full absolute paths in the archive

Question

I have the following command in the part of a backup shell script   tar -cjf site1 bz2  var www site1    When I list the contents of the archive  I get   tar -tf site1 bz2 var www site1 style css var www site1 index html var www site1 page2 html var www site1 page3 html var www site1 images img1 png var www site1 images img2 png var www site1 subdir index html   But I would like to remove the part  var www site1 from directory and file names within the archive  in order to simplify extraction and avoid useless constant directory structure  Never know  in case I would extract backuped websites in a place where web data weren t stored under  var www   For the example above  I would like to have    tar -tf site1 bz2 style css index html page2 html page3 html images img1 png images img2 png subdir index html   So  that when I extract  files are extracted in the current directory and I don t need to move extracted files afterwards  and so that sub-directory structures is preserved   There are already many questions about tar and backuping in stackoverflow and at other places on the web  but most of them ask for dropping the entire sub-directory structure  flattening   or just add or remove the initial   in the names  I don t know what it changes exactly when extracting   but no more   After having read some of the solutions found here and there as well as the manual  I tried    tar -cjf site1 bz2 -C    var www site1  tar -cjf site1 bz2 -C    var www site1  tar -cjf site1 bz2 -C  var www site1   var www site1  tar -cjf site1 bz2 --strip-components 3  var www site1    But none of them worked the way I want  Some do nothing  some others don t archive sub-directories anymore   It s inside a backup shell script launched by a Cron  so I don t know well  which user runs it  what is the path and the current directory  so always writing absolute path is required for everything  and would prefer not changing current directory to avoid breaking something further in the script  because it doesn t only backup websites  but also databases  then send all that to FTP etc    How to achieve this   Have I just misunderstood how the option -C works

User · Answer

Low reputation  too many years of lurking  sigh  so I can t yet comment inline  but I found the answer from  laktak to be the only one that worked as intended on Ubuntu 18 04 -- using tar -cjf site1 tar bz2 -C  var www site1   on my machine resulted in all the files I wanted being under    inside the tar bz2 file  which is probably ok but there is some risk of inconsistent behavior across OSs when un-tarring

User · Answer

The option -C works  just for clarification I ll post 2 examples    creation of a tarball without the full path  full path  home testuser workspace project application war and what we want is just project application war so   tar -cvf output filename tar  -C  home testuser workspace project   Note  there is a space between workspace and project  tar will replace full path with just project   extraction of tarball with changing the target path  default to    i e current directory   tar -xvf output filename tar -C  home deploy    tar will extract tarball based on given path and preserving the creation path  in our example the file application war will be extracted to  home deploy project application war    home deploy  given on extract project  given on creation of tarball   Note   if you want to place the created tarball in a target directory  you just add the target path before tarball name  e g     tar -cvf  path to place output filename tar  -C  home testuser workspace project

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Using the  point  leads to the creation of a folder named  point   on Ubuntu 16    tar -tf site1 bz2 -C  var www site1      I dealt with this in more detail and prepared an example  Multi-line recording  plus an exception   tar -tf site1 bz2      -C  var www site1  style css      -C  var www site1  index html      -C  var www site1  page2 html      -C  var www site1  page3 html      --exclude images   zip      -C  var www site1  images      -C  var www site1  subdir

User · Answer

The following command will create a root directory     and put all the files from the specified directory into it   tar -cjf site1 tar bz2 -C  var www site1     If you want to put all files in root of the tar file   chinthaka is right  Just cd in to the directory and do   tar -cjf target path file tar gz     This will put all the files in the cwd to the tar file as root files

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Seems -C option upto tar v2 8 3 does not work consistently on all the platforms  OSes   -C option is said to add directory to the archive but on Mac and Ubuntu it adds absolute path prefix inside generated tar gz file   tar target path file tar gz -C source path source dir   Therefore the consistent and robust solution is to cd in to source path  parent directory of source dir  and run   tar target path file tar gz source dir   or  tar -cf target path file tar gz source dir   in your script  This will remove absolute path prefix in your generated tar gz file s directory structure

User · Answer

tar -cjf site1 tar bz2 -C  var www site1     In the above example  tar will change to directory  var www site1 before doing its thing because the option -C  var www site1 was given   From man tar   OTHER OPTIONS    -C  --directory DIR        change to directory DIR

User · Answer

Found tar -cvf site1- seqNumber tar -C  var www  site1 as more friendlier solution than  tar -cvf site1- seqNumber tar -C  var www site1     notice the   in the second solution  for the following reasons  Tar file name can be insignificant as the original folder is now an archive entry Tar file name being insignificant to the content can now be used for other purposes like sequence numbers  periodical backup etc

User · Answer

One minor detail  tar -cjf site1 tar bz2 -C  var www site1    adds the files as tar -tf site1 tar bz2   style css   index html   page2 html   page3 html   images img1 png   images img2 png   subdir index html  If you really want tar -tf site1 tar bz2 style css index html page2 html page3 html images img1 png images img2 png subdir index html  You should either cd into the directory first or run tar -cjf site1 tar bz2 -C  var www site1   ls  var www site1

User · Answer

If you want to archive a subdirectory and trim subdirectory path this command will be useful   tar -cjf site1 bz2 -C  var www  site1

[linux] Tar a directory, but don't store full absolute paths in the archive

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