Question

20

Is there a way to `tar` extract without clobbering

rated 0 times [ 20] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 31179 / 2 Years ago, tue, october 25, 2022, 8:23:45

Is there a way to tar extract without clobbering?

I am installing 12.04 and want to restore my data from 10.10. Anything 12.04 specific I would like to keep, that is I do not want the tar'd 10.10 version to be extracted. If I do a general restore such files as .bashrc will be clobbered. Is there a way to avoid this?

Edit: I would note that a booted 12.04 ISO disk image allows an upgrade from 10.10 (or whatever) and it offers to keep old data. I tried this but it complained some applications might be left broken after the upgrade. I decided to just reboot and do a clean install.

Answers

Only authorized users can answer the question. Please sign in first, or register a free account.

ofunn

Add To Favorites

Follow

Total Points: 164

Total Questions: 116

Total Answers: 116

Location: Liberia

Member since Fri, Oct 22, 2021

3 Years ago

ofunn questions

1 Is there a way to change the Gnome power off prompt so it has more option

Fri, Oct 29, 21, 01:03, 3 Years ago

1 ubuntu 21.4 desktop iso burned to dvd fails to start

Thu, Nov 10, 22, 15:23, 2 Years ago

1 What is usage of script command in bash?

Tue, Jun 14, 22, 08:04, 2 Years ago

1 New Kubuntu 20.04 user accounts without group memberships

Mon, Nov 7, 22, 01:33, 2 Years ago

1 Copy files and set owner/group to the owner/group of the destination directory

Tue, Jul 26, 22, 08:22, 2 Years ago

View All

answered 2 Years ago inciplyies · Accepted Answer

I have difficulty understanding what you want but if you made a tar file of your whole system I believe you made a very large tar file that has not a real purpose unless you completely restore the tar file. If you wanted to save your own documents you should have made a backup of those documents and nothing else.

After saying that tar has several nifty options ...

--keep-old-files

This will not overwrite existing files.

--keep-newer-files

This will keep all files that have a newer timestamp as is.

--no-overwrite-dir

This will leave the metadata of an existing directory as is.

A manual for tar can be found here.

But I would advice extracting the tar file on another medium and manually restore those files. It is the safest method.