www.delorie.com/gnu/docs/tar/tar_97.html

search

	Buy GNU books!

GNU tar

6.8 Crossing Filesystem Boundaries

(This message will disappear, once this node revised.)

tar will normally automatically cross file system boundaries in order to archive files which are part of a directory tree. You can change this behavior by running tar and specifying --one-file-system (-l). This option only affects files that are archived because they are in a directory that is being archived; tar will still archive files explicitly named on the command line or through --files-from=file-of-names (-T file-of-names), regardless of where they reside.

--one-file-system

-l

Prevents tar from crossing file system boundaries when archiving. Use in conjunction with any write operation.

The `--one-file-system' option causes tar to modify its normal behavior in archiving the contents of directories. If a file in a directory is not on the same filesystem as the directory itself, then tar will not archive that file. If the file is a directory itself, tar will not archive anything beneath it; in other words, tar will not cross mount points.

It is reported that using this option, the mount point is is archived, but nothing under it.

This option is useful for making full or incremental archival backups of a file system. If this option is used in conjunction with --verbose (-v), files that are excluded are mentioned by name on the standard error.

6.8.1 Changing the Working Directory		Changing Directory
6.8.2 Absolute File Names