Programming Forums - View Single Post - how to recursively copy or move part of a directory limited by size?

mackenga · Jul 3rd, 2005, 2:40 PM

I suggest:

tar -c music | gzip -9 > backup.tgz

That'll give you a nice compressed tarball for starters. MP3s don't squash down that much, though, but this does mean your hierarchy is nicely preserved for starters. Splitting this file into 700Mb (say) chunks is no problem; see the manpage for the split(1) command. Burn the chunks onto disks, then to restore your backup, copy the chunks back;

(Toggle Plain Text)

cat chunk2 >> chunk1
cat chunk3 >> chunk1
...
mv chunk1 backup.tgz
gunzip < backup.tgz | tar -xvf -

You can just cat them together because Unix won't mangle the contents when you do that. When you unpack the resulting tarball, your directory structure should be preserved. Hope this helps!

Jul 3rd, 2005, 2:40 PM	#2
mackenga Professional Programmer Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Glasgow, Scotland Posts: 317 Rep Power: 4	I suggest: (Toggle Plain Text) tar -c music \| gzip -9 > backup.tgz tar -c music \| gzip -9 > backup.tgz That'll give you a nice compressed tarball for starters. MP3s don't squash down that much, though, but this does mean your hierarchy is nicely preserved for starters. Splitting this file into 700Mb (say) chunks is no problem; see the manpage for the split(1) command. Burn the chunks onto disks, then to restore your backup, copy the chunks back; (Toggle Plain Text) cat chunk2 >> chunk1 cat chunk3 >> chunk1 ... mv chunk1 backup.tgz gunzip < backup.tgz \| tar -xvf - cat chunk2 >> chunk1 cat chunk3 >> chunk1 ... mv chunk1 backup.tgz gunzip < backup.tgz \| tar -xvf - You can just cat them together because Unix won't mangle the contents when you do that. When you unpack the resulting tarball, your directory structure should be preserved. Hope this helps!