Bash script TAR by Filetype is not gzipping the specified filetypes on recursive command

Question

Simply put, I did an exhaustive library update on my network to be compatible with XBMC. Now that it's done, I thought it wouldn't hurt to periodically make a backup of the nfo,bub,srt,jpg,tbn files (everything except any video file) that are in the various directories and subdirectories in my TV Shows folder. I also wanted to zip it by date. After playing around, I got this to semi-work:

find '/volume2/MyMedia/TV Shows/' -type f \( -name \*\.sub -o -name \*\.srt -o -name \*\.nfo -o -name \*\.jpg -o -name \*\.tbn \) -print0 | xargs -0 tar -pvczf '/volume2/Backups/XBMC Backups/'XBMC-TVShows-NFO-JPG-TBN-SUB-Backup-$(date +%m-%d-%y).tar.gz

It goes through the motions (scanning every directory and finding the files), and I see the zip file grow, but then suddenly the tar.gz goes down to 0 bytes and counts up again. I think it's doing that once it hits a new directory to scan.

At the end, I get a 1.8MB file with only the last directory it scanned through. Inside that, is almost everything, except it omitted 1 of the subdirectories. IE: It zipped up '30 Rock' and all of the files I specified, but, it did that for all folders except Season 2.

So I am at a loss. Everything looks clear to me in the code. For some reason it's not running properly. I think I have tunnel vision on the project now. A fresh set of eyes would be magnificent!

Here is an output: http://pastebin.com/ywctQ5Sf

Here is what the final tar.gz contained: http://s23.postimg.org/6pc22h7yz/output.png

Final note: The directories of the shows that it backs up do have whitespaces in them. So there is a directory structure like so:

>volume2
->MyMedia
-->TV Shows
--->Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood
---->Season 1
----->Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood.S01E01.Fullmetal Alchemist.nfo

Thank you for any help!

Answer 1

That's because xargs splits the huge list of files across multiple tar commands, which each try to create a new file. Try using the -A option instead of -vczf ... and pipe the whole command to gzip:

find ... -print0 | xargs -0 tar -A | gzip - > "....tar.gz"

Answer 2

So after revisiting this, I tried l0b0's method. It comes back with:

tar: Options `-Aru' are incompatible with `-f -'

So I looked into another way and came up with this script:

#!/bin/bash
find /volume1/Media/TV\ Series/ -iname "*.sub" -exec tar rvfP /volume1/Backups/TestBackup.tar {} \;
find /volume1/Media/TV\ Series/ -iname "*.srt" -exec tar rvfP /volume1/Backups/TestBackup.tar {} \;
find /volume1/Media/TV\ Series/ -iname "*.nfo" -exec tar rvfP /volume1/Backups/TestBackup.tar {} \;
find /volume1/Media/TV\ Series/ -iname "*.jpg" -exec tar rvfP /volume1/Backups/TestBackup.tar {} \;
find /volume1/Media/TV\ Series/ -iname "*.tbn" -exec tar rvfP /volume1/Backups/TestBackup.tar {} \;
gzip /volume1/Backups/TestBackup.tar

It takes a long time, but I let it run in the middle of the night when nothing else is going on, and it works. I only need to run this backup very infrequently anyway.

If you were so inclined, you can also add an elapsed timer:

#!/bin/bash
date1=$(date +"%s")
# Script stuff here. Uncommented...
date2=$(date +"%s")
diff=$(($date2-$date1))
echo "$(($diff / 60)) minutes and $(($diff % 60)) seconds elapsed."