quick tar question

I'm trying to make a backup of my home directory with tar. I'm running the following:

tar -cz /home/username/.snapshot/nightly.0/ > archives/username.tar.gz

This command keeps crashing. First it throws a bunch of permission denied errors coming from the log directory then it just halts and never finishes the tarball.

tar -cz ./.snapshot/nightly.0/ > archives/username.tar.gz
tar: ./.snapshot/nightly.0/logs/mydomain.com/http.2540193/analog/mydomain.com.2006-07.cache: Cannot open: Permission denied
tar: ./.snapshot/nightly.0/logs/mydomain.com/http.2540193/analog/mydomain.com.longterm.cache: Cannot open: Permission denied
tar: ./.snapshot/nightly.0/logs/mydomain.com/http.2540193/analog/mydomain.com.2006-08.cache: Cannot open: Permission denied
tar: ./.snapshot/nightly.0/logs/mydomain.com/http.2540193/analog/mydomain.com.longterm.cache.yesterday: Cannot open: Permission denied
tar: ./.snapshot/nightly.0/logs/mydomain.com/http.2540193/analog/mydomain.com.2006-09.cache: Cannot open: Permission denied
tar: ./.snapshot/nightly.0/logs/mydomain.com/http.2540193/analog/mydomain.com.2006-08.cache.yesterday: Cannot open: Permission denied
tar: ./.snapshot/nightly.0/logs/mydomain.com/http.2540193/analog/mydomain.com.2006-09.cache.yesterday: Cannot open: Permission denied
tar: ./.snapshot/nightly.0/logs/mydomain.com/http.2540193/html/.htpasswd: Cannot open: Permission denied
tar: ./.snapshot/nightly.0/logs/trac.mydomain.com/http.2875297/html/.htpasswd: Cannot open: Permission denied
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

What am I doing wrong?

Getting some permission errors like that is not unusual.

You might be running into the dreaded persistent process killer.

You could break it into steps or try variations like:

nice -19 tar -cf path/to/tarfile.tar path/to/backup/directory
nice -19 gzip path/to/tarfile.tar

And have a look at http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/Automatic_Backup if haven't already.
- -

You are welcome to a refund.-Michael;Comparing 'DH of today' with 'DH of old' does not serve much purpose.-Dallas

That looks normal to me. I get the same thing, but my tarfile is complete upon exit. It only says the exit was delayed, not premature.

However, I don't grab my data from the snapshot, but from my regular directory. Why aren't you doing the same?

-Scott