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I've got a bad backup script including an unwanted file. The .tar.gz backup file is 5gig big and I'd like to get a list of every file in the archive and their size.

Is that possible ? How would you do it ?

2 Answers 2

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This should list all files and detailed information about them:

tar -ztvf somefile.tar.gz
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  • 1
    -t (list) and -v (verbose, like ls -l use a long listing format) Apr 9, 2018 at 21:42
  • -z isn't strictly needed, for a .tgz file just using -tvf was enough. Jul 8, 2019 at 14:25
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Use

tar --list --verbose --gunzip --file backup.tar.gz > backup_list.txt

to create a file containing a list of all the files in your archive.

You can then grep foo backup_list.txt to find things, or edit, sed, cut, view, etc.

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