Question

I’m creating a bash script that automatically copies C source and header files from a particular directory in another host to the directory I’m in on the current host.

It currently generates this command:
ssh host2 “cd dir1/dir2 && find . -maxdepth 1 -regextype posix-extended -regex ‘.*.(c|h)’ | tar -T – -c -f -” | tar xf –

The problem is I get this error:
“tar: This does not look like a tar archive”

This error is output by the final tar (tar xf -) because for some reason the tar file that gets piped is corrupt.

If I do it instead using a combination of ssh, tar and scp it works fine, but that requires me to enter my password (for host2) twice (once for the ssh and once for the scp). I could enter the password as an argument to the script, but I don’t want it to appear in my bash history.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Why not use rsync to do this job instead? It supports --filter which fits your needs exactly. Here’s a sample:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1240150