Alternatives to tar for archiving Linux system?

cow, 9 months ago

I use bupstash.io

hyperspace, 10 months ago

Maybe DwarFS is what you're looking for

Fryboyter, 10 months ago

Maybe Borg is a possibility. However, I have not yet backed up an entire system with it, but only certain files.

• The file permissions have always been correct when restoring files in my case.
• Which compression (LZ4, zlib, LZMA or zstd) and which compression level is used can be specified when creating a backup.
• Backups can be mounted via FUSE, so that you can restore individual files with an file manager or a terminal emulator, for example.

brechmos, 10 months ago

At least on the Mac (bsdtar) you can extract single files out of a tar file.

E.g.,

Create the tar file:

tar cvzf pseudo.tgz pseudo/

Move to another directory

cd /tmp/tt

Extract a single file:

tar -xf …/pseudo.tgz pseudo/10481_2017.1069.png

You say PC, so might want to check the tar version you are using and see if there are extra parameters to do the file extraction.

JollyRoberts, 10 months ago

@brechmos came to mention this. There is also an argument to list the files in the archive if you don't remember the name/path of the one you want.

I don't remember the arg but it's either -t or -l I think

@jmshrv

Xandris, 10 months ago

the main modes are:

• -c for create
• -x for extract
• -t for test/list

tarballs are one long compressed stream, and extracting a file requires decompressing all those before it in the archive, so another archive format may be a better choice if random access to files is important