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Storage / Stage 9 of 11

The archive exists — now check the restore

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Step 3 of 7 · on a machine · 5 min

The listing before unpacking

You can see what an archive holds without unpacking it. That is how you check a copy before relying on it.

tar -tf prints the paths of the archive members and creates nothing on disk. With -v each line looks like ls -l output: mode, owner and group, size, date and path. Here are three lines of tar -tvf for the nightly archive:

text 
drwxr-x--- student/student   0 2026-10-18 16:25 app/bin/
-rwxr-x--- student/student  25 2026-10-18 16:25 app/bin/report.sh
-rw------- student/student  20 2026-10-18 16:25 app/secret.env

The whole nightly listing has seven lines: there is no app/.release line, and no line for the app/ directory itself either. The script handed tar the contents of the directory, not the directory.

Exercise · do it

Build a complete archive

In ~/backup-lab, build an app-full.tar archive from the working copy live/app: it must hold the whole app directory, hidden files included, and the paths inside must start with app/. Check the contents with the archive listing.

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Goals · 0 of 2

  • Build app-full.tar holding the app directory
  • Keep the hidden .release in the archive

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Step goals

0 of 2
  • Build app-full.tar holding the app directory
  • Keep the hidden .release in the archive
Ubuntu 24.04

Step goals

0 of 2
  • Build app-full.tar holding the app directory
  • Keep the hidden .release in the archive
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