A Challenge - server side archiving

[heavencore]

Hello,

 

intro

I have come across a bit of a problem with one of my clients, i developed their website in php and it is hosted on a server farm under easyspace they have zlib 1.1.4 and gzip(i think) installed. i dont have shell access.

 

The problem

The site in question has thousands and thousands of product images, backing these up over ftp takes AGES due to thousands of ftp get commands etc, i need a way of compressing these images server side into one file, it does not matter about compression strength, this can be low, its just the 1 file i need.

 

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated as i have little experience in server side archiving.

 

Regards

 

J.

[Jenk]

<?php

shell_exec('tar cvf images.tar /path/to/images/dir/ && gzip images.tar');


?>

[heavencore]

thankyou for your response.

 

The script runs ok (no errors are thrown back)

 

However no file is created.

 

Do i have to specify save location? or should it just create in same folder as script?

 

Cheers

[Jenk]

change it to:

 

<?php

echo shell_exec('tar cvf images.tar /path/to/images/ && gzip images.tar');

?>

to see errors.

[taith]

you do need write privaliges to the folder as well