Using the Restore Script

@UNREVISED

Warning: The GNU tar distribution does not provide any such restore script yet. This section is only listed here for documentation maintenance purposes. In any case, all contents is subject to change as things develop.

@FIXME{A section on non-scripted restore may be a good idea.}

To restore files that were archived using a scripted backup, use the restore script. The syntax for the script is:

where ***** are the file systems to restore from, and ***** is a regular expression which specifies which files to restore. If you specify --all, the script restores all the files in the file system.

You should start the restore script with the media containing the first volume of the archive mounted. The script will prompt for other volumes as they are needed. If the archive is on tape, you don't need to rewind the tape to to its beginning--if the tape head is positioned past the beginning of the archive, the script will rewind the tape as needed. @FIXME-xref{Media}, for a discussion of tape positioning.

If you specify `--all' as the files argument, the restore script extracts all the files in the archived file system into the active file system.

Warning: The script will delete files from the active file system if they were not in the file system when the archive was made.

See section Using tar to Perform Incremental Dumps, and section Using tar to Perform Incremental Dumps, for an explanation of how the script makes that determination.

@FIXME{this may be an option, not a given}

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