Jim Osborn <jimo@eskimo.com> writes:

Well, more tar questions.

Firstly, I notice that trying to exclude files from being included in an archive doesn't seem to work. That is, no matter what variation of --exclude=FILE (omitting the equal sign, putting the exclude statement before or after the other list of files, including/omitting the leading / in the file's pathname) I try, the files still show up in the archive. FWIW, the list of files is generated by `find.'

In reading the info docs included with SuSE 5.3, the author talks a lot in first person, but never seems to mention just who he/she is. Nor do I see any reference to a tar mailing list, or other support group. So, I'm asking here, wondering if someone knows where the general state of tar is discussed (it's probably not on this SuSE list, but what the hell, it's a starting point).

At this point, it seems that the tar on SuSE 5.3 is seriously broken, unless there is some secret incantation not mentioned in the docs; it'd be nice to hear some authoritative word on its state. Would I be better off digging out the old tar from my ancient Slackware CDs? That's a depressing thought...

Thanks again in advance for any info,

jimo@eskimo.com

If you are using find to get the files, why not just stick a grep -v or two in the pipeline: find -type f |grep -v File|grep -v another|xargs tar cf - >tarfile.tar Or whatever. (If you want to slog it out with tar alone, I think you will find that it is looking for the exact filename -- find will give you a ./ at the beginning and tar is probably stripping it off either before or after checking the --exclude list (just a hunch based on its strange behaviour when extracting single files.)) Hope this helps. - To get out of this list, please send email to majordomo@suse.com with this text in its body: unsubscribe suse-linux-e Check out the SuSE-FAQ at <A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/"><A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/</A">http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/</A</A>> and the archiv at <A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html"><A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html</A">http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html</A</A>>