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6.10 Crossing File System Boundaries

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tar will normally automatically cross file system boundaries in order to archive files which are part of a directory tree. You can change this behavior by running tar and specifying --one-file-system. This option only affects files that are archived because they are in a directory that is being archived; tar will still archive files explicitly named on the command line or through --files-from, regardless of where they reside.

--one-file-system
Prevents tar from crossing file system boundaries when archiving. Use in conjunction with any write operation.

The --one-file-system option causes tar to modify its normal behavior in archiving the contents of directories. If a file in a directory is not on the same file system as the directory itself, then tar will not archive that file. If the file is a directory itself, tar will not archive anything beneath it; in other words, tar will not cross mount points.

This option is useful for making full or incremental archival backups of a file system. If this option is used in conjunction with --verbose (-v), files that are excluded are mentioned by name on the standard error.