More efficient way to find & tar millions of files

Question

I\'ve got a job running on my server at the command line prompt for a two days now:

find data/ -name filepattern-*2009* -exec tar uf 2009.tar {} ;

Answer 1

Here's a find-tar combination that can do what you want without the use of xargs or exec (which should result in a noticeable speed-up):

tar --version    # tar (GNU tar) 1.14 

# FreeBSD find (on Mac OS X)
find -x data -name "filepattern-*2009*" -print0 | tar --null --no-recursion -uf 2009.tar --files-from -

# for GNU find use -xdev instead of -x
gfind data -xdev -name "filepattern-*2009*" -print0 | tar --null --no-recursion -uf 2009.tar --files-from -

# added: set permissions via tar
find -x data -name "filepattern-*2009*" -print0 | \
    tar --null --no-recursion --owner=... --group=... --mode=... -uf 2009.tar --files-from -