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excluding directories in harddrive backup using tar

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I want to backup my debian installation using tar but excluding certain directories like /proc and /dev. Also do I need to put the backup file in /tmp and exclude /tmp so that tar won't try to include the file it's creating?

I've tried numerous ways with no success.

Thanks.

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excluding directories in

Submitted by tongro on Tue, 2007-10-23 05:39.

Did you try the --exclude or --exclude-from options?

If you need to store the backup file temporarily, then /tmp is the obvious place. You wouldn't want to backup /tmp anyway since by definition it's only for temporary files.

$world=~s/war/peace/g;

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excluding directories in harddrive backup using tar

Submitted by somae on Tue, 2007-10-23 14:57.

Yes but I'm not sure the syntax was correct. I tried

tar -cvfj backup.tbz / --exclude=/tmp /proc /dev

and

tar -cvfj backup.tbz / --exclude-from=/tmp /proc /dev

and got error messages like "no such file or directory" "/proc is a directory" "can not stat"

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excluding directories in harddrive backup using tar

Submitted by Matt on Tue, 2007-10-23 20:11.

The path goes last, and you need to specify --exclude for each file or directory:


tar -cvfj backup.tbz --exclude=/tmp \
--exclude=/proc --exclude=/dev /

The --exclude-from=FILE option allows for listing the exclusions in a file named FILE if you get tired of typing all those excludes :-).

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