Questions tagged [diff]
Short for "difference" or "differencing", in computing, "diff" refers to a data comparison that calculates and displays the differences between two objects (usually files or directories).
98
questions
214
votes
16
answers
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How do diff over ssh?
How do I diff files/folders across machines provided that the only connectivity available is ssh?
- 3,501
103
votes
11
answers
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How can I get diff to show only added and deleted lines? If diff can't do it, what tool can?
How can I get diff to show only added and deleted lines? If diff can't do it, what tool can?
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votes
4
answers
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Difference between `curl -I` and `curl -X HEAD`
I was watching the funny server type from http://www.reddit.com with curl -I http://www.reddit.com when I guessed that curl -X HEAD http://www.reddit.com would do the same. But, in fact, it doesn't.
...
- 7,390
36
votes
3
answers
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compare 2 directories and copy differences in a 3rd directory
Running ubuntu 12.04, I want to compare 2 directories, say folder1/ and folder2/ and copy any files that are different to folder3/. There are also nested files, so matching subdirectories should be ...
- 421
36
votes
5
answers
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Does btrfs have an efficient way to compare snapshots?
While diffing mounted snapshots would work, it sounds like it could be horribly slow in many cases.
Is there btrfs specific functionality for diffing snapshots? (I was unable to find any in the docs)
- 1,939
25
votes
7
answers
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Get rsync to generate a patch file instead of copying across files?
I'm copying lots of files that have changed from one server to another using rsync. I know I can use the -n option to do a dry run, so I can see what files have been changed. However is it possible to ...
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24
votes
6
answers
1k
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How do I prove two files are the same legally?
We had someone steal some files before quitting and it has eventually come down to a lawsuit. I've now been provided with a cd of files and I have to "prove" that they are our files by matching them ...
- 2,455
17
votes
7
answers
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How to compare two directories (including sub directories) for differences?
How can I compare two directories with sub dirs to see where is the difference?
- 13.2k
15
votes
11
answers
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How can I diff two config files?
I've got two snmpd.conf files, one on a server that works, and one that doesn't. How can I diff the two config files while stripping out irrelevant comments and newlines?
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14
votes
5
answers
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How do I diff two folders in Windows Powershell?
I'm trying to find differences in the content of two folder structures using Windows Powershell. I have used the following method to ensure that the file names are the same, but this method does not ...
- 249
13
votes
4
answers
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Linux tools to find duplicate files?
I have a large and growing set of text files, which are all quite small (less than 100 bytes). I want to diff each possible pair of files and note which are duplicates. I could write a Python script ...
- 2,996
12
votes
5
answers
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Apply multiple .patch files
I have a directory with .patch files, generated using diff.
I would like to apply all those patches using patch -p1 to another directory.
But patch takes only one file, unless I cat.
What would the ...
- 245
10
votes
1
answer
3k
views
Identifying the number of changed bytes between two ZFS snapshots of the same file
Let's assume I have a ZFS filesystem that contains virtual machine disk images, e.g.
/tank/examplevm/examplevm-flat.vmdk
Let's further assume I take daily snapshots of that ZFS filesystem, e.g.
$ ...
- 415
9
votes
1
answer
3k
views
Is there a command that produces a diff of the permissions of target files?
Just as it sounds, I'm trying to find out if there is a (standard) command that will produce a diff of the permissions between two files and/or directory trees.
Ideally it would put out a patch file ...
- 1,939
8
votes
1
answer
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compare tar content with local folder
I want to compare the content of a tar archive (backup of $HOME) with the content of my local $HOME to see whether there are files in the tar file which are not yet in the local filesystem.
What is ...
- 183
8
votes
2
answers
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debian, diff, config default
I want to know if is posible to get the diff on the original versus the current config files of installed debian packages.
If found an answers which shows up the modified config files, but I find no ...
- 183
7
votes
7
answers
2k
views
Different files of two directories
There are two directories I'd like to compare. I tried diff but it includes the changes inside the files. All I want is something like this
file a is just in /A
file b is missing in /A
file c ...
- 1,153
7
votes
5
answers
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views
Comparing OS configuration of two RHEL servers
What is the best way to compare the OS configuration of two (or more) RHEL 5.X servers? Are there any tools/packages available to do this? Note, I am mostly looking for tunables OS (kernel ...
- 81
6
votes
2
answers
4k
views
rsnapshot diff between snapshots
I am using rsnapshot to manage incremental backups of some GNU/Linux servers.
Although rsnapshot is delivered with a tool called rsnapshot-diff it just provide disk space statistics.
The question is ...
5
votes
2
answers
7k
views
How to export a specific virtualbox snapshot as a raw disk image
I created a Linux appliance for my friends. It's a small Ubuntu installation with Trac, lighthttp and ufw configured.
I made it using VirtualBox.
Now I want to export the latest snapshot version ...
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5
votes
1
answer
1k
views
How to convert an rdiff delta file to a regular diff?
I need to diff two very large files, far too large for diff to handle. rdiff can produce a delta file for them in a few seconds, but I'd like to have a real diff as output. Is there an existing way of ...
- 183
4
votes
2
answers
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Only show what's new in a file
I want to find out what was added to a log file between 2 tasks. Right now the way I do it is:
content of test.log initially
aaa
bbb
saving content of the log
$ cp test.log test.log.before
doing ...
- 3,553
4
votes
2
answers
1k
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How can I compare two directories to compare missing files, when the directories don't have the same structure?
I've been sent a HDD of new and updated files from an organisation that we are working with, but we already have most of the files sitting on our servers, and would like to update our local versions ...
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4
votes
2
answers
4k
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How to create a chained differencing disk of another differencing disk in Virtual Box?
How to create a differencing disk (a chained one) from a disk that is already a differencing image? I would like to have:
W2008 (base immutable)
-> W2008+SQL2008
(differencing, with SQL ...
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4
votes
2
answers
3k
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Is there a diff/merge utility to compare binary files and synchronize data bit-by-bit in either direction based on differences in binary data?
I have a tricky dilemma. I've got some files on two different destination drives, copied from the same source drive. The source drive had been failing, so I used dd to copy over the data to one ...
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4
votes
3
answers
4k
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Check if all files in a directory exists elsewhere
I'm about to remove an old backup directory, but before doing so I'd like to make sure that all these files exist in a newer directory.
Is there a tool for this? Or am I best off doing this "manually"...
- 381
3
votes
4
answers
6k
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Diff and patch for big binary files
As part of my job I regularly need to upload big files (a 512 MB to 1 GB ISO, for example). In some cases, very little changes from ISO to ISO (say, a 10 MB file in a 1 GB ISO). Unfortunately, I can't ...
- 229
3
votes
4
answers
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How can I get 'diff' to show only added and deleted lines? If diff can't do it, what tool can? Take-2
I have 2 sorted files produced by
xxx>find /store -type f -print | sort > /tmp/invent.txt
xxx>find /fbkup -type f -print | sort > /tmp/backup.txt
I want from diff a file name list of files missing ...
- 31
3
votes
3
answers
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How to see what Windows registry and file system changes happened after a software install?
I'm solving a problem - I'm installing software on Windows and it makes the system unstable for some reason. Windows starts crashing soon after. I want to know what changes it made to the registry and ...
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3
votes
2
answers
5k
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Script to find out differences between local and remote file systems over SSH
I am looking for a script to find out the differences between a local and remote file systems (over SSH). Ideally the script should do the following:
-browse the local file system for folders
-find ...
- 3,553
3
votes
3
answers
4k
views
Compare two folder content
How can I compare two folder content under linux.
I'm using diff but I want to display only the files with the same names.
- 412
3
votes
1
answer
272
views
Bug in diff: wrong output for one-character files without newline [closed]
Consider this:
echo -n a > /tmp/a
echo -n b > /tmp/b
diff -B /tmp/a /tmp/b
Clearly, the two files are different, yet, diff seems to think that the files are identical. I've managed to ...
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3
votes
3
answers
1k
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help with bash script using find and diff command
i have a bash script that i need help with:
#!/bin/bash
if [ -f "/suid.old" ]
then
find / -perm -4000 -o -perm -2000 ls > suid.old
else
find / -perm 4000 -o -perm -2000 ls > suid.new
diff suid....
su
2
votes
2
answers
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How to compare/diff ACLs on two directory trees?
I have two directory trees that are supposedly copies of each other. I need to compare not the contents of files but the permissions on them. Is there a tool that will compare two dir trees but ...
- 205
2
votes
3
answers
2k
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diff for binary files
I have a folder with one big file. This is a file that changes each day. Using tar for incremental backups is not a good idea as that big file (each file that is changed is saved) will be copied each ...
- 576
2
votes
3
answers
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rsync -c -i flags identical files as different
My goal: given a list of files on local server, show any differences to the files with the same absolute path on remote server; e.g. compare local /etc/init.d/apache to same file on remote server.
"...
Scott
2
votes
1
answer
2k
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How can I check if a directory contains the same files of a TAR archive?
Let's say I have a folder Documents and a TAR file Documents.tar, how to check if the tar file contains the same files that are present in the directory?
The more obvious solution to me would be to ...
- 268
2
votes
2
answers
658
views
Diff always fail to apply patch of files I make?
I have some files in my server that I wanted to make a patch for, so I took one of the files to test:
cp /path/file ~/file
So now I have just the same file in my root directory so I make any changes ...
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2
votes
2
answers
2k
views
Difficulty restoring a differential backup in SQL Server, 2 media families are expected or no files are ready for rollforward
I have sql backups copied from server A to server B on a nightly basis.
We want to move the sql server from server A to server B without much downtime, but the files are very large.
I assumed that ...
- 235
2
votes
2
answers
5k
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Powershell find orphaned processes
I am looking for a way to find processes that do not have a parent process running (orphaned processes). Im attempting to do this using win32_process. I have the query that returns the attributes ...
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votes
2
answers
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Load, Compare & Diff Registry of Windows Servers & Clients on VHDs?
We are deploying various Windows Servers {2008, 2012} & Clients {7,8.x, 10} and various custom applications, versions & special utilities.
Without bothering the audience here on specifics of ...
- 241
2
votes
3
answers
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"One-sided" diff
I've got two large directory trees--think years of client work for an agency. One is old and out of date; the other is larger and in current use. I'd like to delete the former, but I want to be sure ...
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votes
1
answer
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Can you update a Hyper-V parent differencing disk to push updates to all children?
I have a Windows 2008 Datacenter server where I plan on creating dozens of VMs all using the same base Windows 2003 OS with some preinstall components and updates.
I was wondering,
1) What are the ...
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vote
4
answers
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linux diff command options
diff cookies.old cookies.new
5c5
< One cup vanilla extract
---
> One teaspoon vanilla extract
7d6
< Six ounces chopped liver
21a22
Any flags/options can help me get rid of this 5c5, 7d6, ...
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vote
2
answers
507
views
looking for a tricky one liner to get diff of awk output
Lets say i have two files like below:
file1
a 23
b 34
c 47
file2
a justin_beiber_sucks
b segmentation fault
c jackson
d nop
Now what i want is to get a diff of the first column of two file. I'm ...
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vote
2
answers
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Interactive two panels diff for *nix console?
Could you please advise me about interactive two panels diff tool, something like http://www.sourcegear.com/diffmerge/, but for *nix console/ncurses
or maybe somebody knows how DiffMerge can be run ...
- 142
1
vote
2
answers
2k
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finding a group of string common in two files
I have used diff command in past.I faced a situation to which I did not had a clue
here are some text strings (which can be stored in a file)
CONFIG_XEN=y
CONFIG_XEN_PVHVM=y
...
- 1,473
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vote
2
answers
1k
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diff folders and copy results over
We use a third party newsletter system which updates frequently, usually around 100 files. Each time all the developers release is the whole application again with a changelog but there's usually too ...
- 990
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vote
4
answers
340
views
Diff for a locally modified package in Ubuntu
If I modify the source code of some package that I've installed with apt-get in Ubuntu, is there some package tool that will let me see the diff between what was the original installation and my ...
- 683
1
vote
2
answers
460
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VirtualBox Differencing Disk Sizes
I've recently started trying to use VirtualBox for my new machine so I can prevent the base OS from any artifacts/etc.
I've created a Base OS and removed the drive, marked it as immutable, and ...
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