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bashunixcompressiontaron-the-fly

TAR-ing on-the-fly

I'm trying to fetch all files within all directories on our SAN. I'm starting with my local to test out how I want to do it. So, at my Documents directory: ls -sR > documents_tree.txt

With just my local, that's fine. It gives the exact output I want. But since I'm doing it on our SAN, I'm going to have to compress on-the-fly, and I'm not sure the best way of doing this. So far I have: ls -sR > documents_tree.txt | tar -cvzf documents_tree.tgz documents_tree.txt

When I try to check the output, it is impossible for me to un-tar the file using tar -xvf documents_tree.tar after I have gunzipped it.

So, what is the correct way to compress on-the-fly? How can I accurately check my work? Will this work when performing the same process on a SAN?

Solution

  • You don't need to use tar to compress a single file, just use gzip:

    ls -sR | gzip > documents_tree.txt.gz

    You can then use gunzip documents_tree.txt to uncompress it, or tools like gzcat and zless to view it without having to uncompress it first.