Thanks for your help guys. As it turns out, I just needed to remove the first / from the path, so my command looks like: # tar cvf backup.tar --exclude=home/tempuser/work /home/tempuser That does the trick. Ryan -----Original Message----- From: redhat-list-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx [mailto:redhat-list-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of David Tonhofer, m-plify S.A. Sent: Thursday, October 06, 2005 2:54 PM To: General Red Hat Linux discussion list Subject: RE: tar question > Please look at the tar line closer: Um...right. My bad. Comes from doing two things at a time. > My version of tar is 1.13.25, plus I'm also using the '=' in my > exclude. It is possible that they changed how exclude works in the > newer version of tar. Nah, I don't think so. The difference comes from the fact that you use a a relative path to state the stuff to include, whereas I use an absolute path. Let's make this definitive statement and call it quits for today as the beer awaits. Apparently "exclude" does not 100% respect the principle of least astonishment: cd / # CASE 1: tar -zcf out1.tgz --exclude=etc/sysconfig etc -> the archive contains relative paths -> etc/sysconfig has been excluded (parameter matches archive path) # CASE 2: tar -zcf out2.tgz --exclude=/etc/sysconfig etc -> the archive contains relative paths -> etc/sysconfig has NOT been excluded! (parameter does not match archive path) # CASE 3: tar -zcf out3.tgz --exclude=etc/sysconfig /etc -> the archive contains relative paths, as the leading '/' is stripped tar says "Removing leading `/' from member names" (a Good Thing as you can then untar anywhere) -> etc/sysconfig has been excluded (parameter matches archive path) # CASE 4: tar -zcf out4.tgz --exclude=/etc/sysconfig /etc -> the archive contains relative paths, as the leading '/' is stripped tar says "Removing leading `/' from member names" (a Good Thing as you can then untar anywhere) -> etc/sysconfig HAS BEEN excluded (even though parameter does not match archive path) -- redhat-list mailing list unsubscribe mailto:redhat-list-request@xxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list -- redhat-list mailing list unsubscribe mailto:redhat-list-request@xxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
