errors when backuping ubuntu11.04 with tar

I've been tryi开发者_Go百科ng to backup my ubuntu11.04 with the following tar command

sudo tar -cvpzf /media/TOSHIBA\ EXT/backup.tar.gz --exclude=/backup.tar.gz --exclude=/lost+found --exclude=/proc --exclude=/sys --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/media --exclude=/dev --exclude=/home/manuzhang/Music --exclude=/home/manuzhang/Videos --exclude=/home/manuzhang/Pictures --exclude=/home/.aMule /

every time there is such a failure message

tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors <br/>

the procedure exited when packaging the directory /sbin several times. Finally I exclude it, but it exited in /root

So what caused the problem? Anyone has similar experiences?

Many thanks!

The error `"Exiting with failure status due to previous errors" means exactly that. There was an earlier problem which, while not fatal to the running of the program, is reason enough to exit with a failure code.

Given that you're backing up from the root level, this is almost certainly because a file is not able to be backed up for some reason.

Leave off the verbose flag -v and you should hopefully be able to see the problem better.