Re: [gentoo-user] How to exclude a directory from rsync

[Renat Golubchyk]

On Tue, 16 Nov 2010 23:01:51 +0000 Mick <michaelkintzios@×××××.com>
wrote:
> On Tuesday 16 November 2010 22:26:28 Stefan G. Weichinger wrote:
> > Am 2010-11-16 22:24, schrieb Alan McKinnon:
> > > Apparently, though unproven, at 23:12 on Tuesday 16 November
> > > 2010, Mick did
> > >
> > > opine thusly:
> > >> Excellent, it worked!  :-)
> > >
> > > Glad to hear it.
> > >
> > > I could help because part of my job is running a rather big
> > > public ftp mirror that management graciously pay for. And I went
> > > down this rsync road a long time ago myself.
> > >
> > > You have no idea how many brain cells died in agony to figure out
> > > this specific piece of rsync behaviour :-)
> >
> > ;-)
> >
> > I would like to know if my suggestion also works ;-)
> >
> > Yeah, include/exclude-patterns are rather hard to figure out
> > sometimes ... nearly like regexes -> write once, read never ....
>
> Ha, ha!  True!
>
> Stefan, I tried escaping the spaces (even tried \\ double and \\\
> triple escapes in case it makes a difference because of using ssh)
> but still did not work.  In my head I couldn't see how the full path
> would not work, but the relative path would, but I tried it out all
> the same.
>
> I still don't understand why Alan's recommendation works   ;-)

I'm probably late with my reply, but I'll post it so it will be in the
archives for future reference.

The man page is actually pretty clear on this issue. Quote:

  if the pattern starts with a / then it is anchored to a particular
  spot in the hierarchy of files, otherwise it  is  matched  against the
  end of the pathname.  This is similar to a leading ^ in regular
  expressions.  Thus "/foo" would match a name of "foo" at either the
  "root of the transfer" (for a global rule) or in the merge-file’s
  directory (for a per-directory  rule).   An  unqualified  "foo" would
  match  a  name  of "foo" anywhere in the tree because the algorithm is
  applied recursively from the top down; it behaves as if each path
  component gets a turn at being the end of the filename.  Even the
  unanchored "sub/foo" would match  at  any  point  in  the hierarchy
  where  a "foo" was found within a directory named "sub".

"Root of the transfer" is the directory you want to sync. Thus, if you
run e.g. "rsync /var/log/ /mnt/backups/ --exclude=/portage/" then root
of the transfer is /var/log, and therefore the directory
/var/log/portage will be excluded. If on the other hand you write
--exclude=portage/ then a directory named portage anywhere in the tree
under /var/log will be excluded. Without the trailing slash, i.e. just
--exclude=portage any file (regular file, directory, link, whatever)
named portage anywhere in the tree gets excluded. And finally
--exclude=/portage would exclude a file only at the top of the tree that
is going to be synchronsed.

Hope it helps.

Cheers,
Renat


-- 
Probleme kann man niemals mit derselben Denkweise loesen,
durch die sie entstanden sind.
                                              (Einstein)