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Pekka
Asked: 2010-03-19 09:45:53 +0800 CST

"Stream" tar action from remote server through Putty?

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I am accessing a shared hosting account through Putty / SSH. The account is pretty full, 300 MB below its quota. I need to make a full backup of all data present on the account. Creating a bzip2 file using

tar cjf archive.tar.bz2 directory/*

fails because there is not enough space for the tar.

Does anybody know a way to create a tar file and "stream" it to a local file on my PC? Through putty or any other SSH tool?

linux ssh putty tar

5 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    If you have cygwin, then you can just run something like this on your local machine:

    ssh user@host 'tar cj directory' > /cygdrive/c/archive.tar.bz2

    and it will put the tar archive in c:\archive.tar.bz2

    If you don't have cygwin, you can do the same thing with plink (part of PuTTY) from a command window;

    plink user@host 'tar cj directory' > c:\archive.tar.bz2

    (I'm assuming you're on Windows if you're using PuTTY - if you're on Linux, just run the ssh command)

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  2. Use WinSCP.

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  3. Quotas are enforced on a per filesystem basis. If /tmp has enough space available, there's a good chance you can use it.

    To pipe tar through SSH:

    ssh server "tar -cf - /home/user" | tar xvf -

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  4. on unix/linux it's very easy to push a tar stream (or any stream) over the network.

    PUSH: (if your logged into the machine where the data is)

    tar zcvf - /wwwdata | ssh [email protected] "cat > /backup/wwwdata.tar.gz"

    PULL: (logged into your workstation for instance)

    ssh tar cf - -C sourcedir . | tar xvf -

    ssh tar cf - -C sourcedir . | cat > /backup/mywwwdata.tar

    now, on windows, you maybe able to do this with the ssh that comes with http://www.cygwin.com/

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  5. I'm using plink as a test to 'pull' the entire tree from my iphone via usb networking just to test it.

    Works great!

    plink user@host 'tar' --create --bzip2 --verbose / > x:\iphonebackup\iphone.tar.bz2

    iPhone processor has teh slowness, so it comes in spurts. But, it's working perfectly.

    NOTE: Leave out the "--verbose" part for quiet/save bandwidth. I included it so that I'd get something on my screen to let me know it was working right. Spewing all that information would defeat the purpose of saving pipe/speed. I only used it to confirm function.

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