i asked this question before but i didn't get an answer that would do what i need ..

i have a very huge directory ... and i want to zip this huge directory with excluding some (directories) .. i want to exclude some directories not file ... i repeat .. excluding directories .. not files ..

how possible is it?

well .. i didn't find it yet possible .. i knew how to exclude only one file ..
like this:
tar -cvf file.tar temp/ --exclude temp/CASEtest.sh

this would only exclude CASEtest.sh

how can i exclude all files in that directory that has .sh ? or even exclude two files ?
i did:
tar -cvf file.tar temp/ --exclude temp/*.sh

but it didn't work ..

tar -cvf file.tar temp/ --exclude temp/CASEtest.sh --exclude temp/shell.sh

didn't work

please don't tell me : man tar
cause i did it more than once with no use ..

thanks

this will backup everything excluding /proc and /backups


cd /; tar -cvf /backups/sys1_012503.tar . --exclude proc --exclude backups

examples:


/testtar$ ls -R
.:
test1/ test2/ test3/

./test1:
test1a test1b test1c

./test2:
test2a test2b test2c

./test3:
test3a test3b test3c
david@slacker:~/testtar$ tar -cvf test.tar . --exclude test2
./
./test1/
./test1/test1a
./test1/test1b
./test1/test1c
./test3/
./test3/test3c
./test3/test3b
./test3/test3a
tar: ./test.tar: file is the archive; not dumped

david@slacker:~/testtar$ tar -cvf test.tar . --exclude test2 --exclude test*b
./
./test1/
./test1/test1a/
./test1/test1c/
./test3/
./test3/test3a/
./test3/test3c/
tar: ./test.tar: file is the archive; not dumped


david@slacker:~/testtar$ tar -cvf test.tar . --exclude test2 --exclude test3/test*b
./
./test1/
./test1/test1a/
./test1/test1b/
./test1/test1c/
./test3/
./test3/test3a/
./test3/test3c/
tar: ./test.tar: file is the archive; not dumped

thanks alot .. it worked fine!

but look at this command and tell me please why it didn't work this time

[murshed@localhost murshed]$ tar -cvf test.tar testing1/ --exclude testing1/temp --exclude testing1/shel*
testing1/
testing1/backup.sh
testing1/shell.sh
testing1/CASEtest.sh
testing1/file.tar
testing1/temp.tar
testing1/shell.sh



the temp dir is excluded .. but shel* isn't

the problem is you are adding / to the file name testing1/ instead of testing1

Think of folders as files. Only use a / to specify a path to a file

thanks i will try

Unfortunately, this solutions excludes all proc (and backup) directories on the system. How can I achieve that *only* the /proc is excluded from the tar file and *not* (for example) the /home/rdk/proc directory???

That's a very good point Robin

For this reason it is going to require you to use the path