i want to make a script that monitors and compares my filesytem with a tar archive which holds all the files on my system What's the best way to start with this ? Thanks in advance Zoef

Zoef, depends on which event should be monitored. You could monitor the deletion of a file/directory and/or the creation of a new file/directory ? and/or file manipulation. The best way would not start with an Tar file. because it wast a lot space and other ressources for a simple list generation. But if you have good reasone to use a tar file you could start by sample script below: This script shows you deletet files and directorys. for file in `tar -tf comp.tar` do if [ ! -f $file -a ! -d $file ] then echo "$file missing" fi done No Risk no Fun Frank