tar question
 

What is the correct usage of the -X (exclude files from a backup) qualifier with the tar command? I would like to tar a directory that contains several subdirectories. There are many files I would like to exclude from several subdirectories in the backup. They are common in the fact that they have a common extension name.

tar -cvf mozilla .tar /home/user/.mozilla/user/jcx21zrd.slt/Mail

would include all the files in /Mail and its subdirectories, right?

How do I qaulifiy the tar command to exclude *.msf files in several different subdiretories in the backup?

Thanks.

find /home/user/.mozilla/user/jcx21zrd.slt/ -iname "*.msf" > ~/exclusion.txt
tar -X ~/exclusion.txt -cvf mozilla .tar /home/user/.mozilla/user/jcx21zrd.slt/Mail


Cheers,
Tink

If I understand the man page correctly, the ( -X ) reads the file names from a list where ( file ) is the name of that list. That's not the way I do it.....

For example, to not tar any files with the html extension in my home directory and save that tar file to the /mnt directory, I would cd to the home directory and use this command.....
tar --exclude="*.html" -cvzf /mnt/test.tar.gz .

If you don't want to use the ( . ) to indicate ( present directory ) you can type out the path like this.....
tar --exclude="*.html" -cvzf /mnt/test.tar.gz /home/*

I think the tar --help explains that somewhat better than man tar :)

Thanks to all. I ended up using the tar --exclude"" format as it was quicker.

Once again, though, a kind soul has shown me the power of the "find" command. Thanks very much!