Filesystem Backup: Removing leading slashes

Submitted by Vince42 on Sat, 02/04/2017 - 16:02 Pro Licensee

Hi,

I do a daily "home backup" and a weekly "full backup". On every backup I get the error messages

tar: Removing leading `/' from member names
tar: Removing leading `/' from hard link targets

. If I could specify a command, I would do tar czf -C / home. I tried to enter home in the backup form and to add -C / in the additional options, but the form refuses to accept home as a valid folder name.

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Comments

Submitted by JamieCameron on Sat, 02/04/2017 - 23:12

Are there any other messages lower down in the backup output? Because that message is just a warning, and shouldn't cause the backup to completely fail..

Submitted by Vince42 on Mon, 02/06/2017 - 17:09 Pro Licensee

There is sometimes another warning ("file changed"), but that does not bother me. I just want to get rid of this warning. The easiest way - as the folder selection does only accept absolute paths - would be to implement -C / in the actual tar invocation while removing all leading slashes from the paths. Could this easily be fixed?

Submitted by JamieCameron on Mon, 02/06/2017 - 19:02

I'm a bit reluctant to do that, as it subtly changes the contents of the backup - if for some reason a different version of tar doesn't strip off leading slashes, this change would force that to happen.

It seems like the real issue is the "files changed while reading" warning message. Assuming you are OK with backups containing possibly incomplete files, there is an option on the backup form to ignore these.

Submitted by Vince42 on Tue, 02/07/2017 - 15:01 Pro Licensee

It might just be my personal problem, that I dislike warnings and want to change everything to valid setups. Would it be possible to give the user either the option to provide the exact command instead of using the form, or a switch to allow folder paths without leading slash or an option to make use of the -C /<code>? Any solution would do ... :)

Submitted by JamieCameron on Wed, 02/08/2017 - 21:35

I'll look into adding this as an option.