Tar won't exclude directories.

yougene · 11-29-2005, 07:28 PM

I've been trying to get the whole backup thing down the past couple days with tar. The exclude option has been giving me problems though.

I've been trying to use this command

tar -zcvpf /archive/full-backup-`date '+%d-%B-%Y'`.tar.gz \
--directory / --exclude=mnt --exclude=proc --exclude=var/spool/squid

taken from http://www.tldp.org/LDP/lame/LAME/li...er-backup.html

Even though the exclude options are there it still tries to archive mnt, proc, and var/spool/squid

I'm running a relatively clean install of Slackware 10.2.

Tinkster · 11-29-2005, 08:05 PM

It could well be that you're not invoking that line
from the root directory? If you don't try to prepend
all of the excluded directories with a / :}

Cheers,
Tink

yougene · 11-29-2005, 08:12 PM

I've tried running it from / , prepending a / to all the directories and both of them together. Still no luck.

Tinkster · 11-29-2005, 08:26 PM

Well ... the other thing I overlooked the first time around ...
where do you tell tar WHAT to backup in the first place?

What is that command backing up?

Cheers,
Tink

yougene · 11-29-2005, 08:37 PM

Oooops, I excluded the period at the end in the post, but it's definately in my command line.

I'm trying to backup my whole system.

yougene · 11-29-2005, 10:39 PM

After tinkering with this a little bit I found that taking out the \ after the file name excluded the directories but now every directory starts with period(e.g ./bin).

tar -zcvpf /archive/full-backup-`date '+%d-%B-%Y'`.tar.gz --directory / --exclude mnt --exclude proc --exclude var/spool/squid .

What does that \ do? Are those periods in front of the directories going to be a problem when trying to restore?

gbonvehi · 11-29-2005, 10:47 PM

That \ is used to tell bash that the command spans to another line, it's usually used inside scripts. If you're running the command on a single line, then, you don't have to use it.
The ./ inside tar is fine.

yougene · 11-30-2005, 03:06 PM

Oh good.

Will the tar need any special commands since it has the period in front of every dir, or will this one do?

tar -zxvpf /archive/full-backup-09-October-1999.tar.gz

gbonvehi · 11-30-2005, 03:48 PM

Probably it needs --directory / too

yougene · 12-01-2005, 09:32 AM

Yeah it did