I recently wondered why my backup files are so big. I use a Tar backup script which uses Tar together with the options --no-recursion, --listed-incremental and --files-from. Some files where saved twice.
I found a nearly 10 years old bug report in this list about an inconsistency between the Tar options --listed-incremental and --no-recursion. Unfortunately the bug is still present in the latest Tar version (1.28). Here is the original bug report: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-tar/2005-02/msg00057.html I use Tar the same way like the original bug reporter. To describe the bug, I found a minimal example, which should show the problem too. At first set up a directories and a file inside this directory and make sure, that the listed-incremental file does not exist: $ mkdir testdir1 $ touch testdir1/file1 $ rm -f incr.snar Creating a tar archiv with only "testdir1" without recursion works: $ tar --no-recursion -cvf test.tar testdir1 testdir1/ If I add the --listed-incremental option, the --no-recursion option does not work anymore: $ tar --no-recursion --listed-incremental=incr.snar -cvf test.tar testdir1 tar: testdir1: Directory is new tar: testdir1/subdir1: Directory is new testdir1/ testdir1/file1 $ tar -tf test.tar testdir1/ testdir1/file1 I hope, that the bug can be fixed. If not, an error or warning message should be printed, if --listed-incremental and --no-recursion are used together. Greetings, Björn
