find and tar 700 files

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

i have some 700 files of the same pattern differing only in their datestamp. below some of the files.

i want to tar them all into one tar file.but the below normal command is telling me "arg list too long"

tar -cvf Archive1.tar CurrentCollectorMeterReadBackup*

also i tried the below command but not getting it tarred

find . -type f -name "CurrentCollectorMeterReadBackup*" | xargs tar rvf myfile.tar

i think we can tar this 700 files using find command, can anyone help me out.?

2

I don't see anything wrong with this command.
Are you getting any error?
Rather did you check myfile.tar, with tvf option?

3

the problem is that when i execute that command it tells

myfile.tar: does not exists

4

am using GNU version of tar and above command is working fine for me.
I am not sure if your version expect myfile.tar since r is present in the tar option. Please try following line (Changed r to c)

find . -type f -name "CurrentCollectorMeterReadBackup*" | xargs tar cvf myfile.tar
5

when i use cvf it only tar 193 files instead of 700 files, so i m thought using rvf.

The below comman tar only 193 files instead of 700 files

find . -type f -name "CurrentCollectorMeterReadBackup*" | xargs tar -cvf `myfile.tar`

Using rvf i m getting error

find . -type f -name "CurrentCollectorMeterReadBackup*" | xargs tar -rvf `myfile.tar`

error:

ksh: myfile.tar: not found
tar: directory checksum error (0 != 42256)
tar: directory checksum error (0 != 42298)

6

please can someone help em out ?

Thanks in advance

7

i think it's better to make a directory, then move these files into it and archive the directory.

step1, 
mkdir x
step 2,
find . -name "your-pattern" -exec mv {} x \;
step 3,
tar cf x.tar x

or you can use loop. when dealing with first file(s) you can use tar cvf to generate a tar-ball file,
the remainds you can use tar rvf to add them into archive file one by one.
the following is a demo:

find . -name "your-pattern" -type f |
(
i=0
while read x; do
  if [ $i -eq 0 ]; then
    echo tar cf x.tar $x
  else
    echo tar rf x.tar $x
  fi
  ((i+=1))
done
)
## but this version maybe runs very slowly. 
you may use xargs to improve it. that maybe looks like
find . -name "your-pattern" -type f |
xargs -n50 |
(
.... ## the same as listed above
)
# so can reduce loop times