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Philip
Asked: 2011-01-15 05:52:17 +0800 CST

Backup file format that enables easy access of specific files?

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I need to upgrade a Server and there have to make a compressed backup of a lot of directories. The question is: Which format should I use? tar.gz, cpio? Both compression and decompression processes should be fast. In case I have some corruption on the Server later on, I want to be able to easily pick certain files out of my old backups.

Thanks, Philip

backup gzip cpio

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Good old standard tarballs allow for the extracting of a single file. For more detailed information, I would recommend you read the man page for tar. But, to get you started, here's a quick example : 

    # List content of a gzip compressed tar file
tar -tzf tarball.tgz
# Extract all contents of the gzip compressed tar file
tar -xzf tarball.tgz
# Extract filename from the gzip compressed tar file
tar -xzf tarball.tgz filename
# Extract filename*, same as above but from any directory within the tarball and using pattern expansion. 
tar -xzf --wildcards --no-anchored 'filename*'
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  2. You could use a read-only file system like squashfs. This will also compress the files. The advantage over tar, cpio is that getting a specific file is instant.

    Another alternative is to use 7zip or zip, but not as a solid archive.

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