tar from stdin: piping to tar.

[JohnGalt131]

I want to do something like this

# dd if=/dev/sdX | tar -cvz /location/of/harddiskimage.tar.gz

I am currently using the following

# dd if=/dev/sdX | gzip > /location/of/harddiskimage.img.gz

However I would like to be able to add other things into the archive, not just compress the image.
Any help is appreciated

[cmnorton]

What about:

dd if=/dev/sdX | tar -cvzf /location/of/harddiskimage.tar.gz

z is supposed to compress on create and decompress on extract.

[JohnGalt131]

What about:

dd if=/dev/sdX | tar -cvzf /location/of/harddiskimage.tar.gz

z is supposed to compress on create and decompress on extract.

# dd if=/dev/zero | tar -cvzf /home/user/Desktop/imag.tgz
tar: Cowardly refusing to create an empty archive
Try `tar --help' or `tar --usage' for more information.

[glennric]

Why not first do

dd if=/dev/sdX > filename

Then

tar czvf harddiskimage.tar.gz filename

??

[Duck2006]

Some of this may help

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=633232
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BackupYourSystem/TAR

[JohnGalt131]

Why not first do

dd if=/dev/sdX > filename

Then

tar czvf harddiskimage.tar.gz filename

??

Isn't that two operations? dd is very slow as is and if you add to that time the time needed to tar it, that makes for two long operations when I'd rather it just be 1 long operation.

[glennric]

I don't think that tar accepts data from standard input the way you are trying to do. It needs a list of files to work on, not data like that output by dd. So you may be stuck with two commands.

[glennric]

Why are you trying to do this?

[cmnorton]

# dd if=/dev/zero | tar -cvzf /home/user/Desktop/imag.tgz
tar: Cowardly refusing to create an empty archive
Try `tar --help' or `tar --usage' for more information.

Mea culpa. Sorry about the mis-information.

You can certainly dd from the device and pipe it into gzip. I just tried it.

sudo dd if=/dev/sdb1 | gzip -9 > temp.gz

This works, where /dev/sdb1 is my unmounted external USB drive.

Else, I believe you would have to dd out to a file, and then run that through tar.

Edit:
-----------

Are you trying to image a disk?

[JohnGalt131]

Mea culpa. Sorry about the mis-information.

You can certainly dd from the device and pipe it into gzip. I just tried it.

sudo dd if=/dev/sdb1 | gzip -9 > temp.gz

This works, where /dev/sdb1 is my unmounted external USB drive.

Else, I believe you would have to dd out to a file, and then run that through tar.

Edit:
-----------

Are you trying to image a disk?

Yes I periodically create compressed images. But I would like to be able to append files to the archive (usually text files) such as a list of instructions for a restore, the contents of the image, etc. gzip only compresses, it does not (I don't think) archive.