Copying a file system w/ tar - symbolic links not copied right.

[Don O'Neil]

I've tried both the BSD and GNU tars, I get the same results on both. It's
very strange. 

When I add the B option, no different.... I used:

tar cf - /array01/* | ( cd /mnt/disk01 && tar xfvBp - )

Maybe this is something specific to 4.11? 

Here's what happens:

Source file: 

lrwxrwxrwx    1 root      wheel        21 Feb 19 03:05 apache.log ->
/var/shc/apache/logs/

Destination file created on the tar backup: 

----------   1 root      wheel         0 May 11 11:02 apache.log 

Some have suggested using dump/restore. The problem with dump/restore is
that I can't do it across the network and the file systems need to match.
The whole point is to move these files/directories from one server to
another to a volume with a LOT more space on a RAID array.

-----Original Message-----
From: Kevin Kinsey [mailto:kdk at daleco.biz] 
Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2006 10:54 AM
To: Olivier Nicole
Cc: don at lizardhill.com; freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Copying a file system w/ tar - symbolic links not copied right.

Olivier Nicole wrote:
>>  I'm trying to move a file system from one disk to another, and when 
>> I do
>> this:
> 
> I think that the way to go is:
> 
> tar cf - /source/* | ( cd /destination && tar xfvBp - )
> 
> Note the Bp at the end of the extract tar.
> 
> olivier

Is that for BSD tar, or gtar (GNU)?  We still haven't decided which is
offering the problem, and I don't find "-B"
described in bsdtar(1), although I can see why you'd want it in gtar,
perhaps.

Nonetheless, the tests I made with both tars didn't seem to have this
problem.  Can Don confirm whether this only occurs if /source/ is a
filesystem mount point?  (Also, which tar are you using?