Create a local compressed tarball from remote host directory

ssh user@host "tar -cf - /path/to/dir" | gzip > dir.tar.gz

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.

By: atoponce

2011-12-14 15:54:57

gzip ssh ssh tar gzip

3 Alternatives + Submit Alt

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.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
21

ssh user@host "tar -zcf - /path/to/dir" > dir.tar.gz

__ · 2011-12-16 05:48:38 11
Create a local compressed tarball from remote host directory
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

ssh user@host "tar -czf - /path/to/dir" > dir.tar.gz

mossholderm · 2011-12-15 04:12:54 3
Create a local compressed tarball from remote host directory

untar in place with out creating a temporary file
This is sample output - yours may be different.
0

ssh user@host "tar -zcf - /path/to/dir" | tar -xvz

sandeep048 · 2017-10-07 11:37:51 19

What Others Think

Useful +1

zlemini · 701 weeks ago

I needed to add some redirection after the pipe: | gzip > dir.tar.gz

zlemini · 701 weeks ago

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

atoponce · 701 weeks ago

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

Mozai · 700 weeks and 6 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.

atoponce · 700 weeks and 6 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: ssh user@host "tar -cf - /path/to/dir | gzip" > dir.tar.gz Also, if you didn't want "/path/to/dir" in each archive filename, you could do: ssh user@host "cd /path/to/dir; tar -cf - . | gzip" > dir.tar.gz

splante · 698 weeks and 2 days ago

you can use rsh with tar and gzip ,,,this url will guide you with examples..... http://unixcommandstutorial.blogspot.in/2012/01/gzip-and-tar.html

parashuramsingh · 693 weeks and 3 days ago

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What do you think?

Any thoughts on this command? Does it work on your machine? Can you do the same thing with only 14 characters?

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