Bash backup script. Need help finding a file and reading it

Question

Hi my fist time trying to write a bash script so im kinda bad at it.

I need help with locating a file in a home dir( this file contains a list of files i want to backup). After this i want to loop all lines in the file and make copies of the files.

this is what i have tryed but it dont seem to work:

find /home$n -name .file_with_backup_register | while read line ;
do cp "$line" /var/backup/temp;
done

when im trying to make my tar backup in the script with tar-czvf $(date +%m_%d_%Y) il get:

tar: Cowardly refusing to create an empty archive.

So im guessing its the find /home$n... line that dosent work

Answer 1

You could use this:

$ find $HOME -name file_with_backup_register | xargs cat | xargs -I % cp % /var/backup/temp

If you're unsure whether find succeeds in locating your register file, just invoke:

$ find $HOME -name file_with_backup_register

and see if outputs its valid location.

EDIT see @Barmar's comment under your question, he's probably right. Nevertheless, above answer could be useful as well, since it simplifies your solution.

Answer 2

如果将“ -T”选项与“ tar”一起使用，则可以指定文件名，其中包含要备份的文件名。

tar -cv -T filelist -f tarball.tar