dannyman.toldme.com : HOWTO: Create a Tar Archive From a File List

September 14, 2004
FreeBSD, Technical

HOWTO: Create a Tar Archive From a File List

I had a list of files that someone requested. I wanted to put them in a tar archive, but the tar on the box doesn’t have an option to add a list of files. Huh. Well, this is quick and dirty, and will choke if you have any space in the filenames, but it met my purposes:

[root /root]# cat manifest.txt
/usr/bin/top
/usr/bin/slocate
/bin/login
/bin/xlogin
/bin/ls
/usr/bin/find
/usr/bin/dir
/usr/sbin/lsof
/usr/bin/md5sum
/sbin/syslogd
/usr/bin/pstree
[root /root]# tar cfvz forhans.tar.gz `cat manifest.txt`
tar: Removing leading `/' from member names
bin/ps
sbin/ifconfig
bin/netstat
usr/bin/top
usr/bin/slocate
bin/login
tar: /bin/xlogin: Cannot stat: No such file or directory
bin/ls
usr/bin/find
usr/bin/dir
tar: /usr/sbin/lsof: Cannot stat: No such file or directory
usr/bin/md5sum
sbin/syslogd
usr/bin/pstreetar: Error exit delayed from previous errors
[root /root]# tar tfvz forhans.tar.gz
-r-xr-xr-x root/root     60080 2000-03-07 12:03:26 bin/ps
-rwxr-xr-x root/root     49488 2000-06-13 20:14:25 sbin/ifconfig
-rwxr-xr-x root/root     80632 2000-06-13 20:14:25 bin/netstat
-r-xr-xr-x root/root     34896 2000-03-07 12:03:26 usr/bin/top
-rwxr-sr-x root/slocate  27052 2003-12-24 05:21:35 usr/bin/slocate
-rwxr-xr-x root/root     21672 2002-07-30 10:14:02 bin/login
-rwxr-xr-x root/root     47052 2003-12-27 06:00:42 bin/ls
-rwxr-xr-x root/root     54544 2000-02-02 15:43:28 usr/bin/find
-rwxr-xr-x root/root     47052 2003-12-27 06:00:42 usr/bin/dir
-rwxr-xr-x root/root     14844 2000-02-07 07:50:27 usr/bin/md5sum
-rwxr-xr-x root/root     27112 2000-09-26 21:03:21 sbin/syslogd
-rwxr-xr-x root/root     11376 2000-02-04 22:03:22 usr/bin/pstree

Brian

cpio can make tar files, and it takes lists :)
http://www.kingdomhearts2.net Michael

I need a .tar made for me, but sadly I’m on Windows.
Is there any chance that there’s a program that will create one for me on Windows, or is there anyone out there that will create one out of my file (It’s about 22 megs uncompressed) and send it back?
Thanks ^.^

– Michael
Rick

Michael,

You probably don’t need this any more (3 years later), but for those who might find this through Google (as I did), this may come in handy.

You’ll need some sort of Unix-y command substitute (e.g. cygwin), but you’ve probably already got it since you’re trying to use tar. Anyways, this will do it for you:

touch my.tar && cat my.manifest | xargs tar rvf my.tar

Works for me!
Eugene

Rick,

your post has helped me :-)
thanx
Nicolette

Rick, your post helped me too :)
Marie

If you are using a GNU version of tar, you can use the –from-files option, e.g.:

tar czf tonals2010-01-10.tgz –files-from tonal-files.txt

where tonal-files.txt contains a list of files.

Happy tarring,
Marie
http://www.cran.org.uk/~brucec/blog Bruce

On Windows you can use 7-zip (http://7-zip.org/) for creating archives – it can handle tar, zip, gzip, bzip2 and 7z adds a right-click context menu which is really useful.
Graeme

Thanks Mate, your post just helped me too

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