rsync exclude problem

[bill-lancaster]

I want to backup all my files in 'home' excluding several folders.

sudo rsync -av --delete /home/bill/ /media/mycloud/Ubuntu/dell19 --exclude=.thunderbird --exclude=/home/bill/.cach --exclude=/home/bill/.mozilla

This seems to exclude the first folder (.thunderbird) but not the following two.
Any advice is welcome

Kubuntu 18.04.3

[Snowhog]

Take a look here: https://askubuntu.com/questions/3204...ies-with-rsync

[jlittle]

--exclude=/home/bill/.cach

That looks wrong, did you really run that?

[kubicle]

In short, don't use absolute paths in PATTERN, as it's interpreted to mean the source dir root, not file hierarchy root:
you'll probably want:

sudo rsync -av --delete --exclude='/.thunderbird' --exclude='/.cache' --exclude='/.mozilla' /home/bill/ /media/mycloud/Ubuntu/dell19

Note "cache" as pointed out by jlittle, and I've included a leading "/" for exact matches for the first level sub-directories to be excluded, otherwise the exclude rule will also match /home/bill/[any]/[path]/.thunderbird etc. (unlikely to exist in this case, but possible with other PATTERNs), also added quotes so it will also work with possible white spaces in PATTERNs etc.

[vinnywright]

this is what I used to back up my system one time ,,,

vinny@vinny-Bonobo-Extreme:~$ sudo rsync -aAXvh --progress /mnt/sda6/ --exclude={/cdrom,/dev,/lost+found,/media,/proc,/run,/sys,/tmp} /mnt/sdb1/backup

the thread hear https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...-options/page2

VINNY

[kubicle]

 --exclude={/cdrom,/dev,/lost+found,/media,/proc,/run,/sys,/tmp}

The brace expansion will work in shells like bash or zsh, but isn't shellproof (fails on sh and dash), so you'll need to be careful when using it in scripts (or make sure your script is running on a shell that supports it, as /bin/sh is still dash in *buntus)...using separate exclude rules (or an exclude file with "--exclude-from=[file]" ) will work in any shell.

[vinnywright]

The brace expansion will work in shells like bash or zsh, but isn't shellproof (fails on sh and dash), so you'll need to be careful when using it in scripts (or make sure your script is running on a shell that supports it, as /bin/sh is still dash in *buntus)...using separate exclude rules (or an exclude file with "--exclude-from=[file]" ) will work in any shell.

thanks for the heads up .
I do not know a lot about shell expansion or rsync , I just needed to pack-up my system just in case and do a release upgrade , that did go a little sideways but I managed to work it out and the rsync backup was not needed and has since been deleted.

VINNY