Tar and expecting Folders

[Luke_C]

Hi All,
I dont know if this question as been asked before I am doing a backup script for my webserver and I dont want it backing up a folder.
I have been told the command is

tar cvf testing.tar /home/httpd/www/* --exclude /home/httpd/www/testingsite/*

But it don't seem to be missing the exclude so can any one help me please

I am running Suse 9.3 Pro. GNU Tar

Luke.

[sdousley]

Looking at the man page for tar, it seems the --exclude option is only for a single file rather than a folder. The only way i can see to do this is to put the list of files in that folder into a file

ls /home/httpd/www/testingsite > testing-excludes

then use that file with the --exclude-from (or -X) option like:

tar cvf testing.tar /home/httpd/www/* -X testing-excludes

someone feel free to prove me wrong on this, but that's a simpler way of doing it that i can see, this can also be put into one line on the command line using && to seperate the commands eg:

ls /home/httpd/www/testingsite > testing-excludes && tar cvf testing.tar /home/httpd/www/* -X testing-excludes

[Luke_C]

Thanks for that dude I will give it ago

Little problem I have folders in that which still get backed up any more ideas.

[sdousley]

oops, you will probs wanna do a recursive list to pick up all the files...

ls -R /home/httpd/www/testingsite > testing-excludes && tar cvf testing.tar /home/httpd/www/* -X testing-excludes

note: -R added

[Luke_C]

Again Thanks for the help dude. Will give it ago.

[Luke_C]

Nope don't work dude I am stuck now as my boss needs a backup.

[sdousley]

Can u give an example of a few files that are still being included in the backup? with Full paths

[Luke_C]

Right heres the full thing

I need to back-up

/srv/www/

the directory that needs to be skiped is

/srv/www/htdocs/mod/object/repository

The folder that needs to be skiped contants lots of subfolders and then subfolders in them. With files in.

Does this help. If not I will past a full directory listing.

[sdousley]

does everything further down than /srv/www/htdocs/mod/object/repository need skipping, including sub-folders contents, and sub-sub folders contents? If so, maybe using find would be a bit easier since ls dowsn't seem to be finding all the files...

find /srv/www/htdocs/mod/object/repository -iname '*' > testing-excludes && tar cvf testing.tar /srv/www/* -X testing-excludes

Failing that, I'm out of ideas apart from temporarily moving the files out of /srv/www, maybe move the repository directory into /srv, then backup the www dir, then move the repository directory back to the right place. That's the long way round it, I will continue looking into this for you though, just had another idea!

EDIT: Just looked at the tar man page, there's a --delete option. What you could do is tar the whole lot up, then delete the repositories directory from the tarball.

From reading something like:

tar cvf testing.tar /srv/www/* && tar --delete testing.tar /srv/www/htdocs/mod/object/repository/*

though personally, i would try this with some test files, or backup the whole /srv/www directory first incase it does mess it up.

[Luke_C]

Thanks dude.

and yeah any thing after the repository directory dont need backing up and I will try the new ideas.