Andy Smith wrote:
> On Mon, May 21, 2007 at 04:04:58PM +0100, Brian Chivers wrote:
>> Andy Smith wrote:
>>> Hi Brian,
>>>
>>> On Mon, May 21, 2007 at 11:25:07AM +0100, Brian Chivers wrote:
>>>> I've been playing with all the options and it would appear that the user
>>>> who has created the files likes to use STUPID characters like brackets in
>>>> her filenames :-/ and this is causing the script to error out at random
>>>> points so I've been having a rethink.
>>> Does what I suggested in:
>>>
>>> http://www.hants.lug.org.uk/lurker/message/20070508.120756.ee622777.en.html
>>>
>>> not work?
>>>
>> Not tried it yet, trying to get my mind round what each of the bits does.
>
> Okay,
>
> find /path -type f -atime +365 -print0 | xargs -0 tar pcf - | (cd /target && tar pxvf -)
>
> find /path -type f -atime +365
>
> Find files whose last *access time* was more than 365 days
> ago. If you prefer to use your mtime rule as before then do
> that instead. -atime's not going to work if the filesystem
> is munted noatime, either.
>
> -print0
>
> Print the names of the above files delimited by ascii NUL
> characters. This allows the filenames/paths to contain
> anything, so solves your problem of things like spaces,
> brackets, or other shell metacharacters.
>
> | xargs -0
>
> Pipe that list of paths through xargs -0, which takes a list
> of NUL-separated things and passes them to a command..
>
> tar pcf -
>
> The tar command will compress (-c) the list of files it gets
> from xargs, preserving permissions (-p), and it will write
> out a tar archive to its standard output (-f -).
>
> | (cd /target && tar pxvf -)
>
> The standard output of the previous tar gets piped through
> this subshell, which changes directory to your target, and
> runs another tar to extract (-x) its standard input (-f -)
> verbosely (-v) preserving permissions (-p).
>
> Could probably also be done as just:
>
> tar -C /target pxvf -
>
> but I'm set in my ways..
>
> Hope that makes more sense.
>
> Cheers,
> Andy
>
>
Thanks for explaining it in nice simple terms, the bit that was confusing me was the double tar bit
but now it makes sense.
Brian
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The views expressed here are my own and not necessarily
the views of Portsmouth College
