gzipped tar archive file paths

Question

I am creating a tar.gz file containing some files and folders as follows:

/bin/tar cfz /usr/local/backups/mybackup-${DATENAME}.tar.gz 
                 /usr/local/backups/db-${DATENAME}.sql.gz  
                 /usr/local/tomcat/webapps/MyApp/myapp_folder 
                 /usr/local/tomcat/myapp.properties

But the paths are stored as usr/local that is without /. tar also gives message to remove first / but file is created.

Now when I transfer this file to some other system and want to uncompress it:

tar -zxvf mybackup-2011-APR-18.tar.gz

It creates usr directory in current directory.

How can I compress and uncompress the archive and get my files back into original folders (in /usr tree instead of ./usr)?

Answer 1

This will do it:

(cd / && tar -zxvf mybackup-2011-APR-18.tar.gz )

Alternatively you could create the archive with -P:

/bin/tar -P cfz /usr/local/backups/mybackup-${DATENAME}.tar.gz 
                 /usr/local/backups/db-${DATENAME}.sql.gz  
                 /usr/local/tomcat/webapps/MyApp/myapp_folder 
                 /usr/local/tomcat/myapp.properties

This will not remove the initial / from the filenames in the archive.