Hi Howard, > When restoring files from a streamed archived (i.e. via the option -f > -), it appears the parent subdirectories are restored with the user's > ownership and umasked permissions (subject to any use of > --no-overwrite-dir).
It does not depend on whether you use -f - or restore directly from the archive. The key part is using explicit member names in the command line. This instructs tar to extract only the listed members, and nothing more. In other words, when you do tar xf archive.tar etc/opt/wbem/cimserver_start.conf tar extracts only etc/opt/wbem/cimserver_start.conf, *not* any of its parent directories. If any of its path components does not exist, tar simply creates it, using current owner and umask settings. In contrast, when you do tar xf archive.tar then tar extracts all archive members, including directories, with their proper ownerships and permission bits. If you wish to restore directories as well, you'll need to specify them explicitly, e.g.: tar -xf - --no-recursion etc/opt/wbem etc/opt/wbem/cimserver_start.conf (notice the --no-recursion option). Regards, Sergey
