I have a directory I need to backup using "tar" and/or "zip".  I need
to exclude a directory from the archive. Backup script running on
Unix.

Directory to archive: /home/
Directory to exclude: /home/cpanel/

I need the solution for zip and tar.

Hi makman-ga,

These commands should do it:

zip -r backup.zip /home -x "/home/cpanel/*"

tar -cf backup.tar /home --exclude "/home/cpanel"

Please request clarification if there are any problems.

Regards,
eiffel-ga

---

Request for Answer Clarification by makman-ga on 20 Jun 2006 22:24 PDT

Neither of those commands work.  I still get the cpanel archived in
both zip and tar.  These are the exact commands I used to begin with. 
In the man pages, seems that --exclude and -x work for FILES and not
directories.  I need a solution to ignore a directory... =o)

Here is the exact commands I am running:

// Create compression method parameters
        if ($archiveFormat == "tar" || $archiveFormat == "tar.gz" ||
$archiveFormat == "tbz") {
                $cMethod = "tar -cvf";
        } elseif ($archiveFormat == "zip") {
                $cMethod = "zip -v -9";
        } elseif ($archiveFormat == "gzip") {
                $cMethod = "gzip -v -9";
        }

// Create system commands
$date = date(m_d_Y);

        if ($archiveDir == "") {
                $archiveDir = system("pwd");
        }

// Process excluded files/directories

        if ($excludeDir != "" && $archiveFormat == "tar" ||
$archiveFormat == "tar.gz" || $archiveFormat == "tbz") {
                $excludeDir = "--exclude " . '"' . $excludeDir . '"';
        } elseif ($excludeDir != "" && $archiveFormat == "zip" ||
$archiveFormat == "gzip") {
                $excludeDir = "-x " . '"' . $excludeDir . '*"';
        }

$compress = "$cMethod $filePrefix" . "_" . "$date.$archiveFormat
$archiveDir $excludeDir";
$move = "mv " . $filePrefix . "_" . "$date.$archiveFormat $location";

// Compress all user directories in one archive
print ("\n\n( Compressing $archiveDir Using $cMethod... )\n\n");
$command = system($compress, $result);

        if($result == 0){
                $result = "OK";
        } else {
                $result = "FAILED";
        }




$archiveFormat is defined in config as "tar.gz" OR "zip"
$excludeDir is defined in config as "/home/cpanel"

The "Process excluded files/directories" section is where I am
constructing the "exclude" part of the command with the information
you gave me.  The end result looks exactly like you showed.  here is a
copy of the output from this script with path names replaced:

zip -vr -9 httpdocs_06_20_2006.zip /home/user/domain.com/site -x "/excluded-dir/*"

tar -cvf httpdocs_06_20_2006.tar.gz /home/user/domain.com/site
--exclude "/excluded-dir"

Let me know if you see anything wrong with this output.

THANKS!

-MAK

---

Clarification of Answer by eiffel-ga on 21 Jun 2006 02:36 PDT

Hi makman-ga,

You need to use the full pathname for the excluded directory. I assume
the excluded directory is a subdirectory of the one that you are
archiving:

zip -vr -9 httpdocs_06_20_2006.zip /home/user/domain.com/site -x
"/home/user/domain.com/site/excluded-dir/*"

tar -cvf httpdocs_06_20_2006.tar.gz /home/user/domain.com/site
--exclude "/home/user/domain.com/site/excluded-dir"

Does that solve the problem?

Regards,
eiffel-ga

---

Request for Answer Clarification by makman-ga on 21 Jun 2006 19:09 PDT

ok...  gotcha.  thanks!  both tar and zip work great!  That helps a
lot...  now I can finish my program.  I appreciate the help!

---

Clarification of Answer by eiffel-ga on 22 Jun 2006 03:10 PDT

Thanks, makman-ga, for the comments and kind tip.

---

Request for Answer Clarification by makman-ga on 22 Jun 2006 19:11 PDT

just to add to this in case anyone needs the information.  I also
found out to exclude multiple directories, the command is as follows:

tar -cvf httpdocs_06_20_2006.tar.gz /home/user/domain.com/site
--exclude "/home/user/domain.com/site/excluded-dir1" --exclude
"/home/user/domain.com/site/excluded-dir2"

zip -vr -9 httpdocs_06_20_2006.tar.gz /home/user/domain.com/site
-x "/home/user/domain.com/site/excluded-dir1/*" -x
"/home/user/domain.com/site/excluded-dir2/*"

NOTE: Must use multiple instances of "--exclude" or "-x" and cannot
have ANY spaces after the last one!! I had trouble creating a for loop
to condition this, however, I got it working thanks to eiffel-ga's
help and advanced conditional statements!

-MAK

---

Clarification of Answer by eiffel-ga on 23 Jun 2006 03:05 PDT

Hi makman-ga,

Thanks for the extra information. (I'm posting this here, so that the
question no longer shows "Needs Clarification" when I login.)

command worked perfectly!  simple, but I couldnt find the answer
through the traditional google search.  Thanks!  Hope this one helps
someone else as well...

-MAK

You can also create a file containing a list of directories to
exclude. This saves having to type --exclude "exdir1" --exclude
"exdir2" etc. etc.
Here is a copy of a session that shows how this is done. 
the name of the directory to be tar'd is /tmp/MYDIR and the file that
contains the directories to exclude is /tmp/excl_file. The resulting
archive is /tmp/MyArchive.
The first 16 lines in what follows are just creating dummy files and
directories for the tar to work on. The magic tar cmd is in line 17
(Note the X in -cvfX is UPPER CASE!!). The lines after  that are the
output of the tar cmd, and a tar TOC.
-------------------------- code begins --------------------
     1  Script started on Tue Jun 27 18:27:59 2006
     2  sh-2.03$ mkdir MYDIR
     3  sh-2.03$ cd MYDIR
     4  sh-2.03$ mkdir subdir1
     5  sh-2.03$ mkdir subdir2 
     6  sh-2.03$ mkdir excldir1
     7  sh-2.03$ mkdir excldir2
     8  sh-2.03$ for D in `ls `; do 
            echo "File1 in $D" >${D}/File1_${D}; 
            echo "File2 in $D" >${D}/File2_${D}; done
     9  sh-2.03$ cd ..
    10  sh-2.03$ pwd
    11  /tmp
    12  sh-2.03$ echo ./excldir1 >excl_file
    13  sh-2.03$ echo ./excldir2 >>excl_file
    14  sh-2.03$ cat excl_file
    15  ./excldir1
    16  ./excldir2
    17  sh-2.03$ tar -cvfX MyArchive excl_file -C MYDIR .
    18  a ./ 0K
    19  a ./subdir1/ 0K
    20  a ./subdir1/File1_subdir1 1K
    21  a ./subdir1/File2_subdir1 1K
    22  a ./subdir2/ 0K
    23  a ./subdir2/File1_subdir2 1K
    24  a ./subdir2/File2_subdir2 1K
    25  a ./excldir1 excluded
    26  a ./excldir2 excluded
    37  sh-2.03$ tar -tvf MyArchive
    38  tar: blocksize = 13
    39  drwxr-xr-x 1007/3        0 Jun 27 18:28 2006 ./
    40  drwxr-xr-x 1007/3        0 Jun 27 18:31 2006 ./subdir1/
    41  -rw-r--r-- 1007/3       17 Jun 27 18:31 2006 ./subdir1/File1_subdir1
    42  -rw-r--r-- 1007/3       17 Jun 27 18:31 2006 ./subdir1/File2_subdir1
    43  drwxr-xr-x 1007/3        0 Jun 27 18:31 2006 ./subdir2/
    44  -rw-r--r-- 1007/3       17 Jun 27 18:31 2006 ./subdir2/File1_subdir2
    45  -rw-r--r-- 1007/3       17 Jun 27 18:31 2006 ./subdir2/File2_subdir2

I'm not sure what I am doing wrong:

tar cvf varlog.tgz /var/log --exclude "/var/log/mysql" --exclude "/var/log/apache2"

It creates the file fine; however, it does not exclude the
directories. What am I doing wrong?

OK - I figured it out. It turns out the GNU Tar which I have as I use
Ubuntu requires that the path to be tar'd come after the exclude
options. The example listed here had it before.

TAR:

tar -cvf httpdocs_06_20_2006.tar.gz 
/home/user/domain.com/site
--exclude "/home/user/domain.com/site/excluded-dir1" 
--exclude "/home/user/domain.com/site/excluded-dir2"

GNU TAR:

tar -cvf httpdocs_06_20_2006.tar.gz 
--exclude "/home/user/domain.com/site/excluded-dir1" 
--exclude "/home/user/domain.com/site/excluded-dir2"
/home/user/domain.com/site