Re: Rsync, how to include ~/.files but not ~/.dirs

[Ken Irving <fnkci@uaf.edu>]

On Thu, Jan 25, 2007 at 04:05:25AM +0000, ][ wrote:
> Is there any way to tell rsync to backup all the . files under my home but
> no any . directories? E.g., .profile in, but .gconf/ & .gnome/ etc out?
> 
> FYI, I tried with the following exclude rules but it didn't work, . directories
> are still included.  
> 
>  rsync -vua --exclude-from=exclude.list 
> 
>  File exclude.list:
>  + /home/tong/.*
>  /home/tong/.*/

I created a little test tree under /tmp/home/:

    $ find /tmp/home/
    /tmp/home/
    /tmp/home/paul
    /tmp/home/paul/.foo
    /tmp/home/paul/.dir1
    /tmp/home/paul/.dir1/bar
    /tmp/home/paul/dir2
    /tmp/home/paul/dir2/.file
    /tmp/home/paul/dir2/.dir3
    /tmp/home/paul/dir2/.dir3/last
    /tmp/home/mary
    /tmp/home/mary/.foo
    /tmp/home/mary/.dir1
    /tmp/home/mary/.dir1/bar
    /tmp/home/mary/dir2
    /tmp/home/mary/dir2/.file
    /tmp/home/mary/dir2/.dir3
    /tmp/home/mary/dir2/.dir3/last

With .dir1 in each user directory representing (I think) what you want
to exclude.  The following exclude pattern seems to work:

    $ rsync -azvn --exclude=home/*/.*/ /tmp/home /tmp/rsync2 
    building file list ... done
    created directory /tmp/rsync2
    home/
    home/mary/
    home/mary/.foo
    home/mary/dir2/
    home/mary/dir2/.file
    home/mary/dir2/.dir3/
    home/mary/dir2/.dir3/last
    home/paul/
    home/paul/.foo
    home/paul/dir2/
    home/paul/dir2/.file
    home/paul/dir2/.dir3/
    home/paul/dir2/.dir3/last
    
    sent 370 bytes  received 98 bytes  936.00 bytes/sec
    total size is 0  speedup is 0.00

For some reason, .dir1/ is not excluded if the option is given as
--exclude=/tmp/home/*/.*/ or --exclude=tmp/home/*/.*/.

Ken

-- 
Ken Irving, fnkci@uaf.edu