Exec With Tar And Find

[section31]

i've been trying to troubleshoot this for a long time now and I can't figure it out :cry: I was hoping to see if anyone had problems like this?

 

Purpose: To make a gzipped tarball of a subdirectory. Please look at the 2nd bit of code, thats where the problem is. Whenever I change the path of the find directory, it doesn't work properly even after I checked the find's results and they are correct. The problem happens when making the tar.gz, like stated below it creates an empty archive instead.

><?php


/* This Works Fine */
/* finds any jpg or jpegs in the current working directory and makes a gzip tarball of it. */
$cmd = "tar -cvf backup.tar.gz `find . -iregex '.*\.\(jpg\|jpeg\)' -maxdepth 1`";
exec($cmd, $output, $returnCodes);

/* This Does Not Work, it puts an emtpy gzip tarball thats app. 10k in the directory */
/* The only thing thats diff here is i change the find to look in a subdirectory */
$cmd = "tar -cvf backup.tar.gz `find './foobarDir/' -iregex '.*\.\(jpg\|jpeg\)' -maxdepth 1`";
exec($cmd, $output, $returnCodes);


?>

Edited July 18, 2005 by section31

[TCH-Bruce]

Just a guess but try it this way.

 

>$cmd = "tar -cvf backup.tar.gz `find .\/foobarDir\/ -iregex '.*\.\(jpg\|jpeg\)' -maxdepth 1`";

[section31]

Tried that bruce, and I got the same results an empty archive.

 

I double checked what find returns and the results were correct either way, you're way or my way.

 

This is odd behavior isn't it?

Edited July 18, 2005 by section31

[TCH-Bruce]

Have you tried doing the find first and piping it to the tar command?

[section31]

Sorry I took so long for the reply.

 

Yeah, I tried using the find first and I get the identical results as the other method. It works when I use find . but doesn't work when I use find ./someDir/.

 

You mean something like this right?

>find . -iregex '.*\.\(jpg\|jpeg\)' -maxdepth 1 | xargs tar -cvf backup.tar.gz

Edited July 18, 2005 by section31

[TCH-Bruce]

Remove the trailing slash from the folder name and try it. Are you getting any output from the command at all? An error?

[section31]

I took off the trailing slash and no change.

 

This is whats returned, so there isn't much to work with. Is there a way I can force out more error codes or something. I'm going to start weeping if we don't figure this out.

>exec($cmd, $output, $returnCode);

echo '<pre>' , print_r($output, true) , "\nReturn Code - " , $returnCode , '</pre>';

 

The above returns this

 

Array

(

)

 

Return Code - 2

 

NOTE: in case you need a link to exec() http://us3.php.net/function.exec

Edited July 18, 2005 by section31

[TCH-Bruce]

I'm running out of options.

 

>find ./foobarDir -iregex '.*\.\(jpg\|jpeg\)' -maxdepth 1 | tar -cvf backup.tar.gz -

[section31]

Nope

[TCH-Bruce]

If you take the -maxdepth off your first one that is working wouldn't it back up recursively?

[section31]

Indeed it would do it recursively. I have it set to maxdepth 1 because I don't want it to archive recursively.

[TweezerMan]

Purpose:  To make a gzipped tarball of a subdirectory.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It looks to me like your issue could be due to the fact you're not using the '-z' option with the tar command. Without it, tar does not make a gzip file for you (you get just a plain tar file).

 

I was able to use the following command successfully in a PHP script on my account:

>$cmd = "tar -cvzf backup.tar.gz `find './images' -iregex '.*\.\(jpg\|jpeg\)$' -maxdepth 1` 2>&1";

If you want to see text output from the command to see what it's doing or any text error messages, add the following code to your script:

>echo '<pre>', implode("\n", $output), '</pre>';

The only issue I had with the above code is that it will not archive file names that have spaces in them. I imagine there is a way to deal with this - I didn't try to find out how as I don't know if it would even be an issue for you.

 

Hope this helps...

[section31]

Hey david, It appears the 2>&1 fixed the problem, but now I figured out a way without it. So, here is the final solution to my goal for the record.

 

># Works with spaces in filenames/directorys too
find './foobarDir/' -iregex '.*\.\(jpg\|jpeg\)' -maxdepth 1 -print0 | xargs -0 tar -cvzf backup.tar.gz

 

Thanks you two for being so patient with me.

Edited July 19, 2005 by section31

[TweezerMan]

I would have thought adding the '-z' to your tar command would have more effect on your problem than the '2>&1'. All the '2>&1' does is redirect any error messages (STDERR) to where your PHP script can capture them in the $output variable (STDOUT).

 

I guess you have file names with spaces in them, huh?

 

Glad to hear you finally got it working!

[section31]

I would have thought adding the '-z' to your tar command would have more effect on your problem than the '2>&1'.  All the '2>&1' does is redirect any error messages (STDERR) to where your PHP script can capture them in the $output variable (STDOUT).

 

I guess you have file names with spaces in them, huh? 

 

Glad to hear you finally got it working! 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Yeah, i don't really understand why the '2>&1' made the difference and not the z flag.

 

My files did have spaces in them, but that -print0 and xargs -0 fixed that problem.

[TweezerMan]

My files did have spaces in them, but that -print0 and xargs -0 fixed that problem.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

If all of the .jpg|.jpeg file names in the target subdirectory had spaces in them, that would definitely explain the empty archive files you were getting before.

 

The '-z' option should have given you a true gzip file (a compressed tar archive) instead of just a plain tar file (an archive that is more or less one file concatenated after the other). Since you're putting .jpg files in the archive (which are already compressed), I don't know that you'd get hardly any space advantage from creating a .tar.gz file as opposed to a .tar file.

 

I'd still use the '-z' option just to be consistent though, as I've memorized the options that I use all the time with tar: '-cvzf' to make a tar, and '-xvzf' to extract one.

[TCH-Bruce]

Glad you got it working!

 

Been a long time since I messed with tar and find commands. I've been on Windows too long!