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

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.

Answer 2

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)

Answer 3

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/
/