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 archi

Answer 1

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)