Question

I executed:

tar -Ppcfz backup.tar.gz on /location/

This will:
Create a new tar file for the /location/
Preserve paths,
Preserve permissions,
Compress using gzip

I need to later update this tar file with files from /location/ that have not been added or are new:

tar -Ppuf backup.tar.gz /location/

I get errors:

tar: This does not look like a tar archive tar: Skipping to next
header tar: Archive contains obsolescent base-64 headers tar:
Unexpected EOF in archive tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

Help please.

Answer 1

You could try using the -z flag when updating as well, but my version of tar reports that it can’t update compressed archives. So you need to gunzip the file, then update with tar, then gzip.