rsync, inclusions and exclusions

djeikyb · 02-26-2008, 04:52 PM

I'm trying to copy a bunch of ISOs from one directory to another.

The source directory has the ISOs I want in a complex hierarchy of folders. I don't want that hierarchy copied to the destination, I just want the ISOs.

I want rsync to recursively search the source for directories called "base", and take the ISO from inside. But it should first exlude everything from any directory called "yeti".

So far I have:

Code:

rsync //samba/ ./ -nrvvP --include "*base*.iso" --include "*/" --exclude "yeti/" --exclude "*"

I'm not satisfied:
1. It will preserve the complex hierarchy.
2. It doesn't exclude yeti directories, or matchable files within yeti directories.

I'll keep hacking away at it, but help will be appreciated!

djeikyb · 02-26-2008, 07:18 PM

I've solved #2.

Code:

--exclude "*/yeti/*" --include "*/" --include "*/base*.iso" --exclude "*"

Does it matter what order the rules are in?

djeikyb · 02-28-2008, 05:03 PM

I still haven't figured how to get files without the original folder hierarchy.

chrism01 · 02-28-2008, 06:25 PM

It's not compulsory to do everything on one line, contrary to a lot of answers you see here

Why don't you extend that line to be a short script that derives the necessary dir/filenames and then feeds them to the rsync cmd.
Much easier to debug as well.

djeikyb · 03-04-2008, 01:45 PM

Ah, yes, piping the results of find into rsync did exactly what I wanted. Didn't even have to muck around with rsync's include/exclude thing! Got too stuck on using only one tool.

I eventually used something like:

Code:

find //samba/ -name "base*.iso" | grep "^yeti" | rsync -P