Tar Question - Remove Leading "/" From Member Names

[cmayo]

Hi All,

My server is running a GNU version of tar, and I have a cron job running a shell script to perform a daily backup of a directory with this command:

/bin/tar cvfz /home/tandem/backups/files.tar /home/tandem/

The shell script itself resides inside /home/tandem/backups/.

Upon executing, tar emits the message:

/bin/tar: Removing leading `/' from member names

Since I'm giving tar an absolute path, this is exactly what I want tar to do... I want tar to remove that leading '/' so that my archive path will be a relative path, home/tandem/backups/files.tar.

My concern is this: Other versions of tar I've used in the past don't automatically remove that leading '/' from member names and I want to make sure that if my code moves to another platform with another version of tar, that I never write an archive with that leading '/' in front of the member names... I've done that before and had critical directories under '/' overwritten when the archive was extracted.

So... is there a mostly-universal switch I can provide tar that'll cause any version to remove the leading '/' from member names? If not, how can I specify the relative path, considering that my backups need to begin in the directory just above the directory containing my backup shell script?

Thanks in advance for any tips!

 

[PHV]

man cd

Hope This Helps, PH.
FAQ219-2884
FAQ181-2886

 

[p5wizard]

To elaborate a bit on PHV's excellent reply...

No matter where in your dir-structure a script is physically located, at runtime, the script can cd into any dir it chooses, so that it can access directories relative to that chosen dir.


HTH,

p5wizard

 

[cmayo]

Doh! Guess I had my head too far up my... um.. code to see the obvious. PHV was correct, of course. I added the cd to my shell script and all is well.

Thanks guys!