Is there a simple shell command/script that supports excluding certain files/folders from being archived?
I have a directory that need to be archived with a sub directory that has a number of very large files I do not need to backup.
Not quite solutions:
The tar --exclude=PATTERN command matches the given pattern and excludes those files, but I need specific files & folders to be ignored (full file path), otherwise valid files might be excluded.
I could also use the find command to create a list of files and exclude the ones I don't want to archive and pass the list to tar, but that only works with for a small amount of files. I have tens of thousands.
I'm beginning to think the only solution is to create a file with a list of files/folders to be excluded, then use rsync with --exclude-from=file to copy all the files to a tmp directory, and then use tar to archive that directory.
Can anybody think of a better/more efficient solution?
EDIT: Charles Ma's solution works well. The big gotcha is that the --exclude='./folder' MUST be at the beginning of the tar command. Full command (cd first, so backup is relative to that directory):
cd /folder_to_backup
tar --exclude='./folder' --exclude='./upload/folder2' -zcvf /backup/filename.tgz .
You can have multiple exclude options for tar so
$ tar --exclude='./folder' --exclude='./upload/folder2' -zcvf /backup/filename.tgz .
etc will work. Make sure to put --exclude before the source and destination items.
You can exclude directories with --exclude for tar.
If you want to archive everything except /usr you can use:
tar -zcvf /all.tgz / --exclude=/usr
In your case perhaps something like
tar -zcvf archive.tgz arc_dir --exclude=dir/ignore_this_dir
Possible options to exclude files/directories from backup using tar:
Exclude files using multiple patterns
tar -czf backup.tar.gz --exclude=PATTERN1 --exclude=PATTERN2 ... /path/to/backup
Exclude files using an exclude file filled with a list of patterns
tar -czf backup.tar.gz -X /path/to/exclude.txt /path/to/backup
Exclude files using tags by placing a tag file in any directory that should be skipped
tar -czf backup.tar.gz --exclude-tag-all=exclude.tag /path/to/backup
old question with many answers, but I found that none were quite clear enough for me, so I would like to add my try.
if you have the following structure
/home/ftp/mysite/
with following file/folders
/home/ftp/mysite/file1
/home/ftp/mysite/file2
/home/ftp/mysite/file3
/home/ftp/mysite/folder1
/home/ftp/mysite/folder2
/home/ftp/mysite/folder3
so, you want to make a tar file that contain everyting inside /home/ftp/mysite (to move the site to a new server), but file3 is just junk, and everything in folder3 is also not needed, so we will skip those two.
we use the format
tar -czvf <name of tar file> <what to tar> <any excludes>
where the c = create, z = zip, and v = verbose (you can see the files as they are entered, usefull to make sure none of the files you exclude are being added). and f= file.
so, my command would look like this
cd /home/ftp/
tar -czvf mysite.tar.gz mysite --exclude='file3' --exclude='folder3'
note the files/folders excluded are relatively to the root of your tar (I have tried full path here relative to / but I can not make that work).
hope this will help someone (and me next time I google it)
You can use standard "ant notation" to exclude directories relative.
This works for me and excludes any .git or node_module directories:
tar -cvf myFile.tar --exclude=**/.git/* --exclude=**/node_modules/* -T /data/txt/myInputFile.txt 2> /data/txt/myTarLogFile.txt
myInputFile.txt contains:
/dev2/java
/dev2/javascript
This exclude pattern handles filename suffix like png or mp3 as well as directory names like .git and node_modules
tar --exclude={*.png,*.mp3,*.wav,.git,node_modules} -Jcf ${target_tarball} ${source_dirname}
I've experienced that, at least with the Cygwin version of tar I'm using ("CYGWIN_NT-5.1 1.7.17(0.262/5/3) 2012-10-19 14:39 i686 Cygwin" on a Windows XP Home Edition SP3 machine), the order of options is important.
While this construction worked for me:
tar cfvz target.tgz --exclude='<dir1>' --exclude='<dir2>' target_dir
that one didn't work:
tar cfvz --exclude='<dir1>' --exclude='<dir2>' target.tgz target_dir
This, while tar --help reveals the following:
tar [OPTION...] [FILE]
So, the second command should also work, but apparently it doesn't seem to be the case...
Best rgds,
I found this somewhere else so I won't take credit, but it worked better than any of the solutions above for my mac specific issues (even though this is closed):
tar zc --exclude __MACOSX --exclude .DS_Store -f <archive> <source(s)>
After reading all this good answers for different versions and having solved the problem for myself, I think there are very small details that are very important, and rare to GNU/Linux general use, that aren't stressed enough and deserves more than comments.
So I'm not going to try to answer the question for every case, but instead, try to register where to look when things doesn't work.
IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO NOTICE:
THE ORDER OF THE OPTIONS MATTER: it is not the same put the --exclude before than after the file option and directories to backup. This is unexpected at least to me, because in my experience, in GNU/Linux commands, usually the order of the options doesn't matter.
Different tar versions expects this options in different order: for instance, #Andrew's answer indicates that in GNU tar v 1.26 and 1.28 the excludes comes last, whereas in my case, with GNU tar 1.29, it's the other way.
THE TRAILING SLASHES MATTER: at least in GNU tar 1.29, it shouldn't be any.
In my case, for GNU tar 1.29 on Debian stretch, the command that worked was
tar --exclude="/home/user/.config/chromium" --exclude="/home/user/.cache" -cf file.tar /dir1/ /home/ /dir3/
The quotes didn't matter, it worked with or without them.
I hope this will be useful to someone.
If you are trying to exclude Version Control System (VCS) files, tar already supports two interesting options about it! :)
Option : --exclude-vcs
This option excludes files and directories used by following version control systems: CVS, RCS, SCCS, SVN, Arch, Bazaar, Mercurial, and Darcs.
As of version 1.32, the following files are excluded:
CVS/, and everything under it
RCS/, and everything under it
SCCS/, and everything under it
.git/, and everything under it
.gitignore
.gitmodules
.gitattributes
.cvsignore
.svn/, and everything under it
.arch-ids/, and everything under it
{arch}/, and everything under it
=RELEASE-ID
=meta-update
=update
.bzr
.bzrignore
.bzrtags
.hg
.hgignore
.hgrags
_darcs
Option : --exclude-vcs-ignores
When archiving directories that are under some version control system (VCS), it is often convenient to read exclusion patterns from this VCS' ignore files (e.g. .cvsignore, .gitignore, etc.) This option provide such possibility.
Before archiving a directory, see if it contains any of the following files: cvsignore, .gitignore, .bzrignore, or .hgignore. If so, read ignore patterns from these files.
The patterns are treated much as the corresponding VCS would treat them, i.e.:
.cvsignore
Contains shell-style globbing patterns that apply only to the directory where this file resides. No comments are allowed in the file. Empty lines are ignored.
.gitignore
Contains shell-style globbing patterns. Applies to the directory where .gitfile is located and all its subdirectories.
Any line beginning with a # is a comment. Backslash escapes the comment character.
.bzrignore
Contains shell globbing-patterns and regular expressions (if prefixed with RE:(16). Patterns affect the directory and all its subdirectories.
Any line beginning with a # is a comment.
.hgignore
Contains posix regular expressions(17). The line syntax: glob switches to shell globbing patterns. The line syntax: regexp switches back. Comments begin with a #. Patterns affect the directory and all its subdirectories.
Example
tar -czv --exclude-vcs --exclude-vcs-ignores -f path/to/my-tar-file.tar.gz path/to/my/project/
I'd like to show another option I used to get the same result as the answers before provide, I had a similar case where I wanted to backup android studio projects all together in a tar file to upload to media fire, using the du command to find the large files, I found that I didn't need some directories like:
build, linux e .dart_tools
Using the first answer of Charles_ma I modified it a little bit to be able to run the command from the parent directory of the my Android directory.
tar --exclude='*/build' --exclude='*/linux' --exclude='*/.dart_tool' -zcvf androidProjects.tar Android/
It worked like a charm.
Ps. Sorry if this kind of answer is not allowed, if this is the case I will remove.
For Mac OSX I had to do
tar -zcv --exclude='folder' -f theOutputTarFile.tar folderToTar
Note the -f after the --exclude=
For those who have issues with it, some versions of tar would only work properly without the './' in the exclude value.
Tar --version
tar (GNU tar) 1.27.1
Command syntax that work:
tar -czvf ../allfiles-butsome.tar.gz * --exclude=acme/foo
These will not work:
$ tar -czvf ../allfiles-butsome.tar.gz * --exclude=./acme/foo
$ tar -czvf ../allfiles-butsome.tar.gz * --exclude='./acme/foo'
$ tar --exclude=./acme/foo -czvf ../allfiles-butsome.tar.gz *
$ tar --exclude='./acme/foo' -czvf ../allfiles-butsome.tar.gz *
$ tar -czvf ../allfiles-butsome.tar.gz * --exclude=/full/path/acme/foo
$ tar -czvf ../allfiles-butsome.tar.gz * --exclude='/full/path/acme/foo'
$ tar --exclude=/full/path/acme/foo -czvf ../allfiles-butsome.tar.gz *
$ tar --exclude='/full/path/acme/foo' -czvf ../allfiles-butsome.tar.gz *
I agree the --exclude flag is the right approach.
$ tar --exclude='./folder_or_file' --exclude='file_pattern' --exclude='fileA'
A word of warning for a side effect that I did not find immediately obvious:
The exclusion of 'fileA' in this example will search for 'fileA' RECURSIVELY!
Example:A directory with a single subdirectory containing a file of the same name (data.txt)
data.txt
config.txt
--+dirA
| data.txt
| config.docx
If using --exclude='data.txt' the archive will not contain EITHER data.txt file. This can cause unexpected results if archiving third party libraries, such as a node_modules directory.
To avoid this issue make sure to give the entire path, like --exclude='./dirA/data.txt'
After reading this thread, I did a little testing on RHEL 5 and here are my results for tarring up the abc directory:
This will exclude the directories error and logs and all files under the directories:
tar cvpzf abc.tgz abc/ --exclude='abc/error' --exclude='abc/logs'
Adding a wildcard after the excluded directory will exclude the files but preserve the directories:
tar cvpzf abc.tgz abc/ --exclude='abc/error/*' --exclude='abc/logs/*'
To avoid possible 'xargs: Argument list too long' errors due to the use of find ... | xargs ... when processing tens of thousands of files, you can pipe the output of find directly to tar using find ... -print0 | tar --null ....
# archive a given directory, but exclude various files & directories
# specified by their full file paths
find "$(pwd -P)" -type d \( -path '/path/to/dir1' -or -path '/path/to/dir2' \) -prune \
-or -not \( -path '/path/to/file1' -or -path '/path/to/file2' \) -print0 |
gnutar --null --no-recursion -czf archive.tar.gz --files-from -
#bsdtar --null -n -czf archive.tar.gz -T -
You can also use one of the "--exclude-tag" options depending on your needs:
--exclude-tag=FILE
--exclude-tag-all=FILE
--exclude-tag-under=FILE
The folder hosting the specified FILE will be excluded.
Use the find command in conjunction with the tar append (-r) option. This way you can add files to an existing tar in a single step, instead of a two pass solution (create list of files, create tar).
find /dir/dir -prune ... -o etc etc.... -exec tar rvf ~/tarfile.tar {} \;
You can use cpio(1) to create tar files. cpio takes the files to archive on stdin, so if you've already figured out the find command you want to use to select the files the archive, pipe it into cpio to create the tar file:
find ... | cpio -o -H ustar | gzip -c > archive.tar.gz
gnu tar v 1.26 the --exclude needs to come after archive file and backup directory arguments, should have no leading or trailing slashes, and prefers no quotes (single or double). So relative to the PARENT directory to be backed up, it's:
tar cvfz /path_to/mytar.tgz ./dir_to_backup --exclude=some_path/to_exclude
tar -cvzf destination_folder source_folder -X /home/folder/excludes.txt
-X indicates a file which contains a list of filenames which must be excluded from the backup. For Instance, you can specify *~ in this file to not include any filenames ending with ~ in the backup.
Success Case:
1) if giving full path to take backup, in exclude also should be used full path.
tar -zcvf /opt/ABC/BKP_27032020/backup_27032020.tar.gz --exclude='/opt/ABC/csv/' --exclude='/opt/ABC/log/' /opt/ABC
2) if giving current path to take backup, in exclude also should be used current path only.
tar -zcvf backup_27032020.tar.gz --exclude='ABC/csv/' --exclude='ABC/log/' ABC
Failure Case:
if giving currentpath directory to take backup and full path to ignore,then wont work
tar -zcvf /opt/ABC/BKP_27032020/backup_27032020.tar.gz --exclude='/opt/ABC/csv/' --exclude='/opt/ABC/log/' ABC
Note: mentioning exclude before/after backup directory is fine.
It seems to be impossible to exclude directories with absolute paths.
As soon as ANY of the paths are absolute (source or/and exclude) the exclude command will not work. That's my experience after trying all possible combinations.
Check it out
tar cvpzf zip_folder.tgz . --exclude=./public --exclude=./tmp --exclude=./log --exclude=fileName
I want to have fresh front-end version (angular folder) on localhost.
Also, git folder is huge in my case, and I want to exclude it.
I need to download it from server, and unpack it in order to run application.
Compress angular folder from /var/lib/tomcat7/webapps, move it to /tmp folder with name angular.23.12.19.tar.gz
Command :
tar --exclude='.git' -zcvf /tmp/angular.23.12.19.tar.gz /var/lib/tomcat7/webapps/angular/
Your best bet is to use find with tar, via xargs (to handle the large number of arguments). For example:
find / -print0 | xargs -0 tar cjf tarfile.tar.bz2
Possible redundant answer but since I found it useful, here it is:
While a FreeBSD root (i.e. using csh) I wanted to copy my whole root filesystem to /mnt but without /usr and (obviously) /mnt. This is what worked (I am at /):
tar --exclude ./usr --exclude ./mnt --create --file - . (cd /mnt && tar xvd -)
My whole point is that it was necessary (by putting the ./) to specify to tar that the excluded directories where part of the greater directory being copied.
My €0.02
I had no luck getting tar to exclude a 5 Gigabyte subdirectory a few levels deep. In the end, I just used the unix Zip command. It worked a lot easier for me.
So for this particular example from the original post
(tar --exclude='./folder' --exclude='./upload/folder2' -zcvf /backup/filename.tgz . )
The equivalent would be:
zip -r /backup/filename.zip . -x upload/folder/**\* upload/folder2/**\*
(NOTE: Here is the post I originally used that helped me https://superuser.com/questions/312301/unix-zip-directory-but-excluded-specific-subdirectories-and-everything-within-t)
The following bash script should do the trick. It uses the answer given here by Marcus Sundman.
#!/bin/bash
echo -n "Please enter the name of the tar file you wish to create with out extension "
read nam
echo -n "Please enter the path to the directories to tar "
read pathin
echo tar -czvf $nam.tar.gz
excludes=`find $pathin -iname "*.CC" -exec echo "--exclude \'{}\'" \;|xargs`
echo $pathin
echo tar -czvf $nam.tar.gz $excludes $pathin
This will print out the command you need and you can just copy and paste it back in. There is probably a more elegant way to provide it directly to the command line.
Just change *.CC for any other common extension, file name or regex you want to exclude and this should still work.
EDIT
Just to add a little explanation; find generates a list of files matching the chosen regex (in this case *.CC). This list is passed via xargs to the echo command. This prints --exclude 'one entry from the list'. The slashes () are escape characters for the ' marks.
I can't find the answer to this for the life of me. Because I am packaging a zip in a specific way for a build process, I don't want to include a folder at all in the resulting zip at the root. For example, if I have this file path:
MyFolder/
A.png
B.txt
C.mp3
And I use either the command:
zip -r -X "MyFolder.zip" MyFolder/*
or
cd MyFolder; zip -r -X "../MyFolder.zip" *
I end up with a zip file that has the root element of MyFolder. What I want is for when I unzip it is to dump all of it right into the directory, like this:
A.png
B.txt
C.mp3
In other words, I don't want MyFolder or any other folder as the root. I read through the whole manual and have tried numerous options and a lot of Google searching, and zip seems to just really want to have a folder at the root.
Thanks!
It was Archive Utility's fault (a Mac OS X unzipper app). When I used the unzip command from the command line, it works great.
(cd MyFolder && zip -r -X "../MyFolder.zip" .)
Stumbled across this answer but didnt want to have to change in out of directories. I found the -j option useful which adds all files to the root of the zip. Note that its is all files so subdirectory structure will not be preserved.
So with this folder structure:
MyFolder
- MyFile1
- MySubFolder
- MyFile2
And this command:
zip -rj MyFolder.zip MyFolder
You get this:
MyFolder.zip
- MyFile1
- MyFile2
I found the easier way to make an encrypted zip file with the terminal app on mac (mac os) just from the files of your folder.
The command for the terminal
zip -j -e wishedname.zip yourfolder/*
That's it. Enjoy!
*
For more information to zip command in the terminal app
man zip
What -j and -e do?
-j
--junk-paths
Store just the name of a saved file (junk the path), and do not store directory names. By default, zip will store the full path (relative to the current directory).
-e
--encrypt
Encrypt the contents of the zip archive using a password which is entered on the terminal in response to a prompt (this will not be echoed; if standard error is not a tty, zip will exit with an error). The password prompt is repeated to save the user from typing errors.
Install zip
sudo apt install zip
use zip
zip -r foo.zip .
You can use the flags -0 (none) to -9 (best) to change compressionrate
Excluding files can be done via the -x flag. From the man-page:
-x files
--exclude files
Explicitly exclude the specified files, as in:
zip -r foo foo -x \*.o
which will include the contents of foo in foo.zip while excluding all the files that end in .o. The backslash avoids the shell filename substitution, so that the name matching
is performed by zip at all directory levels.
Also possible:
zip -r foo foo -x#exclude.lst
which will include the contents of foo in foo.zip while excluding all the files that match the patterns in the file exclude.lst.
The long option forms of the above are
zip -r foo foo --exclude \*.o
and
zip -r foo foo --exclude #exclude.lst
Multiple patterns can be specified, as in:
zip -r foo foo -x \*.o \*.c
If there is no space between -x and the pattern, just one value is assumed (no list):
zip -r foo foo -x\*.o
See -i for more on include and exclude.
Apreciate any help and excuse me if my terminology is incorrect.
this is a script(*.sh file) that:
1-goes to a specific dir A
2-copies files from another dir B to dir A
3-#comented out# it also unzips the files in dir A and its subdirectories
4-#comented out# it also removes rows 1-6 and the last row of all *.csv files in dir A
#!/bin/bash
# Configure bash so the script will exit if a command fails.
set -e
#cd to the dir you want to copy to:
cd /cygdrive/c/path/I/want/to/copy/to
#echo Hello
#cp the files i want
#include the subdirectories
cp -r /cygdrive/c/path/I/want/to/copy/from/* .
# This will unzip all .zip files in all subdirectories under this one.
# -o is required to overwrite everything that is in there
#find -iname '*.zip' -execdir unzip -o {} \;
#find ./ -iname '*.csv' -exec sed -i '1,6d;$ d' '{}' ';'
Now I can get this script to work in cygwin by going to the dir where the file is stored and giving the following commands:
./filename.sh
or
/cygdrive/c/path/where/the/file/is/filename.sh
or
bash filename.sh
I can also do this in CMD/Windows DOS by doing the following:
C:\cygwin\bin\bash.exe -l
to get into a bash terminal and then give the following command:
/cygdrive/c/path/where/the/file/is/filename.sh
In task scheduler(in Windows) I have tried to schedule the following:
C:\cygwin\bin\bash.exe -l /cygdrive/c/path/where/the/file/is/filename.sh
but this does not work, even though the seperate commands work in CMD/Windows DOS as I have said above
Now what I want to do is be able to schedule this script(filename.sh) like I would a .vbs or .bat file in windows using task scheduler? Can anyone advise on this?
Note I have tried to write a Windows batch file(.bat) to do this(see below), but I could not get my unzip and sed commands to work,see here. So I have tried to write the Bash shell script above.
chdir C:\pointA
C:\cygwin\bin\cp.exe /cygdrive/v/pointB/* .
::find -iname *.zip -execdir unzip {} \;
::find ./ -iname '*.csv' -exec sed -i '1,6d;$ d' '{}' ';'
A solution is to associate .sh files with a batch file that runs bash. That way whenever you tell windows to execute an sh file it'll use the correct launcher - whether that's via a double click or a scheduled task. Here's mine:
#echo off
d:
chdir d:\cygwin\bin
bash --login %*
Associating a file type means that when you try to execute a file of that type, windows will use the path to that file as an argument passed to the program you've specified. For example, I have LibreOffice4 associated with .ods files. So if I doubleclick a .ods file, or just enter the path to a .ods file at the command prompt, windows will run open office calc, with the first parameter being the ods file. So if I have Untitled.ods on my desktop. I doubleclick it. That's effectively the same as opening up command prompt, typing
D:\Program Files (x86)\LibreOffice 4\program\scalc.exe" "C:\Users\Adam\Desktop\Untitled.ods".
and hitting enter. Indeed, if I do it, the expected happens: open office calc starts up and loads the file.
You can see how this works if you change the association to echo.exe (which I found in D:\cygwin\bin).
If I change the association to echo, open up the command prompt and type
"C:\Users\Adam\Desktop\Untitled.ods"
I'll just see echo.exe echo the filename back to me.
So what I'm suggesting you do is this:
create a batch file to run bash scripts using cygwin's bash (or use mine).
change the association for .sh files to that batch file
execute those .sh files directly, as though they were .exe or .bat files.
why not creating a batchfile (.bat) that loads your cygwin bashscript and schedule this batchfile? like this you dont have to deal with the way M$ handles paramters