tar extract fails with status "Permission Denied" -- safe to ignore?

Question

During an extract operation using tar I receive the following messages:

tar czvf home.tar.gz home --exclude="*/public_ftp"

tar: home/<redacted>/public_ftp: Cannot open: Permission denied
tar: home/<redacted>/public_ftp: Cannot open: Permission denied
tar: home/<redacted>/public_ftp: Cannot open: Permission denied
tar: home/<redacted>/public_ftp: Cannot open: Permission denied
tar: home/<redacted>/public_ftp: Cannot open: Permission denied
tar: home/<redacted>/public_ftp: Cannot open: Permission denied
tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors

If I don't care about those public_ftp folders, is the rest of the tar archive ok and I can continue to use it?

Answer 1

The permission denied means you do not have write access to the local public_html folders.

Since you specified v you can see if the files you are interested in were extracted.

If you are not concerned about restoring files from the ones indicating an error and are satisfied with the rest of the extract operation you are good to go.