Question

Scenario: I have a directory on a server that hosts my website that contains hundreds of user-submitted images. I am creating a backup script that takes all the images from the directory and compresses them into one .tar.gz file. The command I have so far is:

tar -czpf /path/to/backups/my_backup.tar.gz path/to/images/

Problem: No inside my path/to/images/ I have a directory called tmp/. When I run the command, I get a .tar.gz file containing all the image in the path/to/images/ directory and a subdirectory called tmp/.

Question: How can I get the command to skip/not include the tmp/ subdirectory in the .tar.gz file.

Thanks a million in advance.

Answer 1

You are looking for the --exclude argument.

--exclude=PATTERN

Some users find exclude options confusing. Here are some common pitfalls:

• The main operating mode of tar does not act on a path name
  explicitly listed on the command line if one of its file name
  components is excluded. In the example above, if you create an
  archive and exclude files that end with *.o, but explicitly name
  the file dir.o/foo after all the options have been listed,
  dir.o/foo will be excluded from the archive.

• You can sometimes confuse the meanings of --exclude=PATTERN and
  --exclude-from=FILE-OF-PATTERNS (-X FILE-OF-PATTERNS). Be
  careful: use --exclude=PATTERN when files to be excluded are
  given as a pattern on the command line. Use
  --exclude-from=FILE-OF-PATTERNS to introduce the name of a file
  which contains a list of patterns, one per line; each of these
  patterns can exclude zero, one, or many files.

• When you use --exclude=PATTERN, be sure to quote the PATTERN
  parameter, so GNU tar sees wildcard characters like *. If you
  do not do this, the shell might expand the * itself using files
  at hand, so tar might receive a list of files instead of one
  pattern, or none at all, making the command somewhat illegal.
  This might not correspond to what you want.

For example, write:

$ tar -c -f ARCHIVE.TAR --exclude '*.o' DIRECTORY

rather than:

$ tar -c -f ARCHIVE.TAR --exclude *.o DIRECTORY

• You must use use shell syntax, or globbing, rather than regexp
  syntax, when using exclude options in tar. If you try to use
  regexp syntax to describe files to be excluded, your command
  might fail.