Tar: Parameter list is too long

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi all,

I have a lot of files in my audit log directory which i am trying to tar. However, i hit the below error:
ksh: /usr/bin/tar: 0403-027 The parameter list is too long.

Is there any work around to resolve this problem? I need to tar all the files up.

Thanks.

2

try reading this

or could you create the tar of fewer files, and then add the remaining files to it?

3 
$ find . -name '<whatever wildcard>' -print | xargs tar -rf audit.tar
OR
$ find . -name '<whatever wildcard>' -exec tar -rf audit.tar {} \;

If your tar doesn't support starting a new archive when -r is used, create it first using an empty file.

4

Hi pludi,

I tried the suggestion of using 'find . -name '<whatever wildcard>' -exec tar -rf audit.tar {} \;' but hit error.

That leads to another question? How do I create an empty tar file in AIX 5.3?

Thanks.

5

Why not try moving all audit log files to another dir, and then tar up that dir?

6

just create an empty tar file using toch

touch audit.tar
find . -name "*.log" -print | xargs tar -uvf audit.tar

from the current directory..

cheers,
Devaraj Takhellambam