Using gnu tar 1.22 on ext3 here, every level 1 incremental archive created contains an entry for every unchanged subdirectory. This disagrees with the expected behaviour described in the manual. Quoting from http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_section/Incremental-Dumps.html#SEC94:
" Some time later you create another incremental backup. You will then see: $ tar --create --file=archive.2.tar --listed-incremental=/var/log/usr.snar /usr tar: usr/local/db: Directory is new usr/local/db/ usr/local/db/data usr/local/db/index The created archive `archive.2.tar' will contain only these three members. " Note it says: "only these three members". However my test script below produces the following output: $ ./tar_test top/ top/clean/ top/dirty/ top/empty/ top/dirty/file1 This is inconsistent with the manual example. I expect to see only top/dirty top/dirty/file1 in the archive, because the directories top/clean and top/empty did not change during the test. So why are they present in the level1.tar file? This issue makes it difficult to work with my level 1 archives that contain thousands of these useless empty unchanged directory entries. Thank you for any assistance to resolve this issue. ---------- script begin ---------- #! /bin/bash mkdir -p top/dirty top/clean top/empty touch top/dirty/file1 top/clean/file2 tar --create --file=level0.tar --listed-incremental=snapshot top sleep 1 date >top/dirty/file1 tar --create --file=level1.tar --listed-incremental=snapshot top tar --list --file=level1.tar ---------- script end ----------
tar_test
Description: Binary data
