Question about using tar command

[linuxuser3477]

I'm having some trouble with the tar command I'm trying to backup all files that end with .config in the /etc directory and then name the backup file backup.tar

So I use this command using the wild card

tar –cvf backup.tar /etc *.config

and all it does it just backup everything in the /etc directory instead of just backing up files that end with .config and gives and error

tar: *.config: Cannot stat: No such file or directory

Not sure what I'm doing wrong

[scathefire]

Using tar

you can't use wildcards directly in a tar command. but there is an alternative.

[Rubberman]

Here is the relevant section from the link provided by scathefire (to whom is due thanks for a good link):

TAR and Wildcard Characters (*) in Creating And Restoring Archives
Wildcards can *not* be used directly in tar commands. The following commands will *fail*:

      host% tar -cf $RMT *.log
      host% tar -xf $RMT *.log
Wildcard functionality can be obtained by combining Unix features with tar.

Creating a tar archive of a sub-set:
A command placed between back graves (`) will expand on the command line of another command. The ls and find commands will accept wildcards and list sub-sets of files. For example, these two tar commands:

      host% tar -cf t.tar `ls *.log`
      host% tar -cf t.tar `find *.log -print`
  
both expand to become:

      host% tar -cf t.tar gtestit.log test.log
  
The ls or find command, placed between back graves, replaces the file specification on the tar command and expands to a list of files.

Sample session:

      unix:~> ls *.log
      gtestit.log   test.log

      unix:~> tar -cvf t.tar `ls *.log`
      a gtestit.log 4 blocks.
      a test.log 22 blocks.

      unix:~> tar -cvf t.tar `find *.log -print`
      a gtestit.log 4 blocks.
      a test.log 22 blocks.

      unix:~> tar -tvf t.tar
      -rw-r--r-- 4018 204    1985 Jan 13 11:58:52 1995 gtestit.log
      -rw-r--r-- 4018 204   10819 Jan 11 13:43:41 1995 test.log