On Tue, 16 Nov 2010 23:01:51 +0000 Mick <michaelkintz...@gmail.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)
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature