On Fri, 2004-04-30 at 16:53, J.L. Coenders wrote: > Hi all, > Does anyone know what how to hidden and backup files into an archive with > tar/zip/rar? > I want to backup my ~/Mail directory, but somehow it doesn't work with > Fileroller so I want to try it manually (errors). However, I cannot find how What are the errors? > to pack hidden files. Maybe I am looking for the wrong thing or does anyone > have another solution to my problem. > And how can I test an archive to see if it works proper? With "dot" files, you can either let tar's recursion pick them up by tarring from the parent directory, or by specifying a regex that matches them (like .??*). Here is an example of the former case. The "tar tzf" is showing you the contents of the compressed tarfile. Take out all the "z"'s if you don;t want compression. $ mkdir tartest $ cd tartest $ echo "Hello" > .hidden $ echo "Goodbye" > not_hidden $ cd .. $ tar czvf mytar.tgz tartest ... $ tar tzf mytar.tgz tartest/ tartest/.hidden tartest/not_hidden Cheers, Ben > > Thanks, > Jeroen >