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Create a local compressed tarball from remote host directory

Terminal - Create a local compressed tarball from remote host directory
ssh user@host "tar -zcf - /path/to/dir" > dir.tar.gz
2011-12-16 05:48:38
User: __
Functions: ssh
16
Up
Down
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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Alternatives

There are 2 alternatives - vote for the best!

Terminal - Alternatives
ssh user@host "tar -cf - /path/to/dir" | gzip > dir.tar.gz
2011-12-14 15:54:57
User: atoponce
Functions: gzip ssh
Tags: ssh tar gzip
6
Up
Down
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.

Comments (7) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
ssh user@host "tar -czf - /path/to/dir" > dir.tar.gz
2011-12-15 04:12:54
User: mossholderm
Functions: ssh
Tags: ssh tar gzip
0
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Create a local compressed tarball from remote host directory
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Know a better way?

If you can do better, submit your command here.

What others think

Both solutions get the same result, but the firstone tries to minimize the bandwith usage, which should be an advantage at a slow network connection. The price fro that ist to squeeze out the cpu performance in two ways: ssh encryption and compressing.

The second solution needs more bandwith but use less cpu power, because the local host will compress the tarfile.

As often this is a tradeof between networkbandwith and cpu power. It depends also on the content of the tarfile, if it's compressable or not.

So there is no "better" alternative in any situation at least for me.

Comment by f4m8 74 weeks and 5 days ago

Definitely another way to get at the same result. However, OpenSSH (and other SSH implementations) support compression in the SSH connection. So, you can get the benefit of not burning the remote CPU (although you're using compression for the connection, you're not for both the connection and the archive simultaneously), and still minimize data transferred on the wire. Either way works.

Comment by atoponce 74 weeks and 4 days ago

Your point of view

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