Hi everyone,
Maybe this is simple question for many of you, but I get confused.
How to archive a parent directory which contains some subdirectories and some files?
I have searched this forum, there are some commands like tar,etc, I tried but can not be implemented in my system.
My system: IBM AIX 5.3
Many thanks for all your response.
Why can't you use tar? That's a basic tool found on every UNIX system I know.
This will create a compressed tar archive, containing all files and subdirectories. Replace 'compress' by 'gzip' or 'bzip2' if available, as they provide a much better compression.
$ tar -cf - /path/to/directory/ | compress -c > backup.tar.Z
Hi pludi,
Thanks for the guide. But still not solved my problem. Maybe this will make my question easier to understand.
root@xxx # pwd
/tmp/wilson
root@xxx # ls -l
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 root system 256 Jan 12 15:50 ibmType
drwxr-x--- 5 root system 256 Mar 27 15:47 rmvcsub
drwxr-xr-x 10 root system 4096 Mar 27 18:46 study
drwxr-xr-x 8 root system 256 Mar 13 19:40 study1
root@xxx # uname -a
AIX xxx 3 5 xxxxxxx
So, how to archive study and study1 directories into 1 file, and the archive result will be in current directory?
Thanks again for the help. 
# pwd
/tmp/wilson
# tar -cvf - study study1 | compress -c > study.tar.Z
or, if you want the complete path
# cd /
# tar -cvf - /tmp/wilson/study /tmp/wilson/study1 | compress -c > /tmp/wilson/study.tar.Z
Hi Pludi,
I have tried your command. It worked!
Do you have any tar related document which can be easily understand?
Will be very appreciate if you can recommend to me 
Many thanks.
Besides "man tar"? Only the documentation for GNU tar, which probably works a bit different than the AIX variant, and the Wiki page. But the key behavior is defined by the POSIX standard, those should work the same across the board.
nice docs brother pludi. thks