[SOLVED] issue with tar and -X option

lleb · 07-27-2012, 10:48 AM

hello, playing around with the -X in tar to point to my excludes.conf file, but the problem is tar is reading everything past the tar cvjf as the foo.tar.bz2 file and NOT reading the -X. have also tried --exclude-from=excludes.conf this was even worse.

Code:

tar cvjf -X /path/to/excludes.conf FOO.tar.bz2 /path/to/directory/to/tar/

This produces a tarfile labeled -X and does nothing with the excludes. so i tried:

Code:

tar cjvf --exclude-from=/path/to/excludes.conf FOO.tar.bz2 /path/to/directory/to/tar/

this made the tarfile --excludes-from=/path/to/excludes\ FOO.tar.bz2

again not what I want.

What is the proper syntax that I am missing....

here is what I read

Quote:

‘--exclude-from=file’
‘-X file’
Causes tar to ignore files that match the patterns listed in file.

Use the ‘--exclude-from’ option to read a list of patterns, one per line, from file; tar will ignore files matching those patterns. Thus if tar is called as ‘tar -c -X foo .’ and the file ‘foo’ contains a single line ‘*.o’, no files whose names end in ‘.o’ will be added to the archive.

Notice, that lines from file are read verbatim. One of the frequent errors is leaving some extra whitespace after a file name, which is difficult to catch using text editors.

However, empty lines are OK.

the -X option does not give me the option of a path to create and a path to create from for the tarball.

roger_heslop · 07-27-2012, 10:55 AM

The -X switch should probably not come immediately after -f. The -f switch specifies the file, and immediately following the that would be the name of the file which you would like, which explains the outcome.

Try this: tar cjvf FOO.tar.bz2 --exclude-from=/path/to/excludes.conf /path/to/directory/to/tar/

...or some other variant.

lleb · 07-27-2012, 11:39 AM

thank you roger_heslop, i was just getting ready to report i figured it out. i had the syntax wrong. needed exactly like you posted the -X or --exclude-from=FOO needs to be after the file name to tar.

TobiSGD · 07-27-2012, 12:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lleb

thank you roger_heslop, i was just getting ready to report i figured it out. i had the syntax wrong. needed exactly like you posted the -X or --exclude-from=FOO needs to be after the file name to tar.

That is not really true. Your issue was not that it came before the filename, but between the -f option and the filename.

Code:

tar cvjf filename files-to-tar

is nothing more than the short form for

Code:

tar -c -v -j -f filename files-to-tar

In the long form it seems to be more clear that filename is a parameter for the -f option. So it is perfectly valid to
put the -X option before the filename, but just not between the -f option and its parameter, the filename.
For example, these are valid ways to do it:

Code:

tar -X excludefile -c -v -j -f filename files-to-tar
tar -X excludefile cvjf filename files-to-tar
tar cvjX excludefile -f filename files-to-tar
tar cvjf filename -X excludefile files-to-tar
tar cvjf filename files-to-tar -X excludefile

In short, the -f option, in all its allowed forms, always expects a filename after it, in the same way that the -X option always expects the excludefile after it.

lleb · 07-27-2012, 12:39 PM

TobiSGD Thank you, that is much more clear.