[kwlug-disc] tar --directory help please

[Ronald Barnes]

Anton Avramov wrote on 2025-06-04 10:43:

> to pass the wildcard to tar us single quotes like so:
> 'etc/systemd/system/mailm*'
> 
> Give it a go let us know

# tar -vvvcf ffs.tar --directory=/ 'etc/systemd/system/mailman*'
tar: etc/systemd/system/mailman*: Cannot stat: No such file or directory
tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors


Single or double quotes are giving me the same results.


There's gotta be a way to do this without using `cd /` first!


I've even tried "escaping" the wildcard:

# tar -vvvcf ffs.tar --directory=/ 'etc/systemd/system/mailman\*'
tar: etc/systemd/system/mailman\\*: Cannot stat: No such file or directory
tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors



(Thanks for the suggestion Anton!)