Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!mips!apple!agate!darkstar!cats.ucsc.edu!jik From: jik@cats.ucsc.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens) Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions Subject: Re: How to archive several files with tar? Message-ID: <16873@darkstar.ucsc.edu> Date: 10 Jun 91 01:24:09 GMT References: <626E0BEE3F3F601CC4@lure.latrobe.edu.au> Sender: usenet@darkstar.ucsc.edu Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz Lines: 15 In article , adrianho@barkley.berkeley.edu (Adrian J Ho) writes: |> The idea is _not_ to put the tar file in the directory you're tar'ing, |> because your tar file will otherwise end up being included in itself. |> In the worst case, it could be the _last_ file included, which means |> that your tar file could end up being _twice_ as large as it's |> supposed to be. Actually, the worst case is that the tar file will continue to grow as tar writes into it, so that when tar opens that file to archive it, the file will grow as tar is archiving it, which means that there will be more to archive, etc., etc. until the disk fills up or the user exceeds his quota or the maximum file size or whatever. -- Jonathan Kamens jik@CATS.UCSC.EDU