How to except a file or package from tarring

Harlin · 08-04-2006, 01:25 PM

I need to tar up a directory. It has a lot(! maybe 1000 or so files) in it's top directory. However it has a subdirectory that I do not want included in the tar archive. How can i tell it to exclude the directory i dont want?

perfect_circle · 08-04-2006, 02:35 PM

I haven't tried it but maybe something like this may work:
lets say you have the directory dir1 you want to tar and you want to exclude the directory dir2 thats inside dir1: dir1/dir2

Try something like this:

Code:

tar -cvf dir1.tar --exclude=dir1/dir2 dir1

Let me know if it works.

win32sux · 09-03-2006, 09:52 PM

i actually need to do this myself, but i'm still trying to figure it out... i can confirm that your illustration unfortunately doesn't work here... i've tried all these:

Code:

tar cvzf dir1.tar.gz --exclude=dir1/dir2/ dir1/

Code:

tar cvzf dir1.tar.gz --exclude=./dir1/dir2/ dir1/

Code:

tar cvzf dir1.tar.gz --exclude=/path/to/dir1/dir2/ dir1/

and no luck with any of them... i suspect it's a syntax problem, not sure... when/if i figure it out i'll post, but if you or anyone else knows what i'm doing wrong your input would be greatly appreciated...

win32sux · 09-03-2006, 10:32 PM

got it working like this:

Code:

tar cvzf dir1.tar.gz --exclude='dir2' dir1/

but this is gonna make it ignore ANY subdirectory (or file) named "dir2", right??

that would suck... =/

i'd like to make it so that only the specified directory (and no others, even if they have the same name) is excluded... my guess is the path would need to be specified, but i can't get it to work like that yet...

gilead · 09-03-2006, 10:38 PM

That's odd, the following works for me. I have a directory called Defaults in my ~/GNUstep directory that I want to exclude from the backup:

Code:

tar -czf /tmp/test.tar.gz --exclude /home/steve/GNUstep/Defaults /home/steve

win32sux · 09-03-2006, 10:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gilead

That's odd, the following works for me. I have a directory called Defaults in my ~/GNUstep directory that I want to exclude from the backup:

Code:

tar -czf /tmp/test.tar.gz --exclude /home/steve/GNUstep/Defaults /home/steve

thanks for the reply!!!

i can confirm it doesn't work for me like that... =(

i'm on Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake)...

maybe i should try on my slackware 10.2 box to see if it makes a difference...

win32sux · 09-03-2006, 11:10 PM

no luck (specifying the dir's path like gilead) on slackware 10.2 either...

win32sux · 09-03-2006, 11:34 PM

seems like i couldn't get the exclusion to work with gilead's example because (unlike him) i wasn't specifying the entire path for the directory to be tarballed... in other words, it won't work for me like this:

Code:

tar cvzf dir1.tar.gz --exclude /tmp/dir1/dir2 dir1

but it DOES work for me like this:

Code:

tar cvzf dir1.tar.gz --exclude /tmp/dir1/dir2 /tmp/dir1

the only thing that kinda sucks is that doing it like this makes the entire path be put into the tarball... so whenever someone untars the file they will end-up with a "tmp" directory which they will have to CD into to get to dir1... imagine if it was a much more complex path...

know any workaround for that??

win32sux · 09-03-2006, 11:42 PM

i found a workaround (just specify the current dir):

Code:

tar cvzf dir1.tar.gz --exclude ./dir1/dir2 ./dir1

this way dir2 gets excluded, and the tarball doesn't contain the whole path...

what do you think?? please let me know if theres something wrong with this...

thanks for the help, gilead!!!

gilead · 09-03-2006, 11:50 PM

hmmm - I was starting to doubt myself so I ran it again. Thankfully it worked again:

Code:

$ ls -l /home/steve/GNUstep
total 8
drwxr-x--- 2 steve steve 4096 2006-07-13 09:45 Defaults/
drwxr-x--- 4 steve steve 4096 2006-02-28 11:15 Library/
$ pwd
/tmp/tar-test
$ tar -czf /tmp/tar-test/test.tar.gz --exclude /home/steve/GNUstep/Defaults /home/steve
tar: Removing leading `/' from member names
$ tar -zxf test.tar.gz
$ ls -l home/steve/GNUstep
total 4
drwxr-x--- 4 steve steve 4096 2006-02-28 11:15 Library/

Most times I'm running tar from the directory (or the parent) of the sources anyway so your workaround would work here as well.

perfect_circle · 09-04-2006, 07:53 AM

SOrry, wrong post

ygloo · 09-22-2006, 12:10 PM

backup of "/" with several dirs excluded:

tar -cvpf image.tar --exclude=/home --exclude=/dev --exclude=/sys --exclude=/proc /