Create a local compressed tarball from remote host directory

Terminal - Create a local compressed tarball from remote host directory

ssh [email protected] "tar -cf - /path/to/dir" | gzip > dir.tar.gz

2011-12-14 15:54:57

User: atoponce

Functions: gzip ssh

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Create a local compressed tarball from remote host directory

The command uses ssh(1) to get to a remote host, uses tar(1) to archive a remote directory, prints the result to STDOUT, which is piped to gzip(1) to compress to a local file. In other words, we are archiving and compressing a remote directory to our local box.

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ssh [email protected] "tar -zcf - /path/to/dir" > dir.tar.gz

2011-12-16 05:48:38

User: __

Functions: ssh

Tags: ssh tar gzip

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Create a local compressed tarball from remote host directory

This improves on #9892 by compressing the directory on the remote machine so that the amount of data transferred over the network is much smaller. The command uses ssh(1) to get to a remote host, uses tar(1) to archive and compress a remote directory, prints the result to STDOUT, which is written to a local file. In other words, we are archiving and compressing a remote directory to our local box.

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ssh [email protected] "tar -czf - /path/to/dir" > dir.tar.gz

2011-12-15 04:12:54

User: mossholderm

Functions: ssh

Tags: ssh tar gzip

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Create a local compressed tarball from remote host directory

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Comment by zlemini 316 weeks and 5 days ago

I needed to add some redirection after the pipe:

| gzip > dir.tar.gz

Comment by zlemini 316 weeks and 5 days ago

@zlemini Ah, yes. Simple typo, and fixed. Thanks!

Comment by atoponce 316 weeks and 5 days ago

Better to do the compression on the remote side; use 'tar czf' over there and just write it straight to a file here.

Comment by Mozai 316 weeks and 4 days ago

@Mozai I wouldn't necessarily say that doing compression remotely is "better", but it's certainly an alternate way of doing the command. If you're concerned about data bandwidth on the wire, OpenSSH (and many other SSH implementations) support compression to varying degrees. Lastly, not all tar(1) implementations support compression builtin. Best to keep the command 100% portable, as much as possible, than relying on platform-specific enhancements.

Comment by atoponce 316 weeks and 4 days ago

There may be times where you have plenty of bandwidth but very short of remote processor so this could be useful in that case. I'd say it's usually better to do the compression on the remote side, though. You certainly wouldn't want to use ssh compression, because then you'd be compressing, decompressing, and compressing again. If your tar doesn't have the z option, you would use this:

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Create a local compressed tarball from remote host directory

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