tar question

[David Tonhofer, m-plify S.A.]

--"Dege, Robert C." <robert.dege at ngc.com> wrote:

>
> Tar will only exclude patterns that match the list in the archive it's
> creating.  So first, you need to drop the '/', since tar automatically
> drops that.
>
> So your tar line should look like this:
>
> # tar -cvf /backup.tar --exclude=home/tempuser/work /home/tempuser

Not true ;-) ... It's not important whether you have the '/' or not.
But you must precede every 'exclude' with the '--exclude' flag. You can't list
them like you did. At leas in GNU tar.

Try this (tar-1.14-4): The presence of the toplevel '/' has no effect:

   # cd /tmp

   # tar czf etc1.tgz /etc --exclude etc/sysconfig
   # tar czf etc2.tgz /etc --exclude /etc/sysconfig
   # tar czf etc3.tgz /etc

   # tar tzf etc1.tgz | grep sysconfig
   etc/X11/sysconfig/
   etc/X11/starthere/sysconfig.desktop

   # tar tzf etc2.tgz | grep sysconfig
   etc/X11/sysconfig/
   etc/X11/starthere/sysconfig.desktop

   # tar tzf etc3.tgz | grep sysconfig
   etc/sysconfig/
   etc/sysconfig/console/
   etc/sysconfig/system-logviewer
   etc/sysconfig/ntpd
   ........

However:

   # tar czf etc4.tgz /etc --exclude etc/sysconfig etc/ntp
   tar: Removing leading `/' from member names
   tar: etc/ntp: Cannot stat: No such file or directory
   tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

You must do

   # tar czf etc4.tgz /etc --exclude etc/sysconfig --exclude etc/ntp

Interestingly, I put the files-to-backup before the '--exclude',
you put them after, which is the way to do it according to the man page.
Interesting.