excluding sockets in a tar backup

[dave]

Hello,
I've got the following tar command, which is backing up several rh9
systems. My problem is i keep getting these socket ignored messages. I would
like to know what these are, if they mean the backups are corrupted and how
to ignore or handle them.
Thanks.
Dave.

tar cpf /mnt/full-archive-backup-`date '+%d-%B-%Y'`.tar --directory
/ --exclude=dev --exclude=mnt --exclude=proc --exclude=lost+found .

[Scott Lurndal]

Post by dave
Hello,
I've got the following tar command, which is backing up several rh9
systems. My problem is i keep getting these socket ignored messages. I would
like to know what these are, if they mean the backups are corrupted and how
to ignore or handle them.
Thanks.
Dave.
tar cpf /mnt/full-archive-backup-`date '+%d-%B-%Y'`.tar --directory
/ --exclude=dev --exclude=mnt --exclude=proc --exclude=lost+found .

It means that one or more of the directories you are backing up
contain a FIFO or Unix-domain socket. Neither of these will be
copied to the archive (nor should they).

In other words, the message is benign and you may safely ignore it.

scott

[Robert M. Riches Jr.]

Post by dave
Hello,
I've got the following tar command, which is backing up several rh9
systems. My problem is i keep getting these socket ignored messages. I would
like to know what these are, if they mean the backups are corrupted and how
to ignore or handle them.
Thanks.
Dave.
tar cpf /mnt/full-archive-backup-`date '+%d-%B-%Y'`.tar --directory
/ --exclude=dev --exclude=mnt --exclude=proc --exclude=lost+found .

While, as another poster stated, the message about ignoring
sockets is benign, it's annoying to see it in the log file
every time. I use the -X option, followed by the name of a
file that contains a list of paths I wish to exclude. I
make sure to prefix all my paths with './' (without the
quote marks). I seem to recall reading that the way you are
specifying just the last segment of the path, you exclude
any file anywhere in the tree with the same final segment.
You might want check making a file somewhere in the tree and
make sure it's getting backed up.

Good luck.

Robert Riches
***@verizon.net
(Yes, that is one of my email addresses.)

[John]

Post by dave
Hello,
I've got the following tar command, which is backing up several rh9
systems. My problem is i keep getting these socket ignored messages. I
would like to know what these are, if they mean the backups are
corrupted and how to ignore or handle them.
Thanks.
Dave.
tar cpf /mnt/full-archive-backup-`date '+%d-%B-%Y'`.tar --directory /
--exclude=dev --exclude=mnt --exclude=proc --exclude=lost+found .

While, as another poster stated, the message about ignoring sockets is
benign, it's annoying to see it in the log file every time. I use the -X
option, followed by the name of a file that contains a list of paths I
wish to exclude.

This is the best approach that I have found as well. You can generate the
list of sockets to exclude on the fly within your backup script using
`find -type s`.

I make sure to prefix all my paths with './' (without
the quote marks). I seem to recall reading that the way you are
specifying just the last segment of the path, you exclude any file
anywhere in the tree with the same final segment.

Follow this advice, because, in fact, you'll exclude any file with any
path segment that matches. E.g.,
/home/dave/dev/important_devel_files won't be backed up.

-John