> Is there any way to tell rsync to backup all the . files under my home but
> no any . directories? E.g., .profile in, but .gconf/ & .gnome/ etc out?
>
> FYI, I tried with the following exclude rules but it didn't work, . directories
> are still included.
>
>  rsync -vua --exclude-from=exclude.list
>
>  File exclude.list:
>  + /home/tong/.*
>  /home/tong/.*/

I created a little test tree under /tmp/home/:

$ find /tmp/home/
/tmp/home/
/tmp/home/paul
/tmp/home/paul/.foo
/tmp/home/paul/.dir1
/tmp/home/paul/.dir1/bar
/tmp/home/paul/dir2
/tmp/home/paul/dir2/.file
/tmp/home/paul/dir2/.dir3
/tmp/home/paul/dir2/.dir3/last
/tmp/home/mary
/tmp/home/mary/.foo
/tmp/home/mary/.dir1
/tmp/home/mary/.dir1/bar
/tmp/home/mary/dir2
/tmp/home/mary/dir2/.file
/tmp/home/mary/dir2/.dir3
/tmp/home/mary/dir2/.dir3/last

With .dir1 in each user directory representing (I think) what you want to exclude. The following exclude pattern seems to work:

$ rsync -azvn --exclude=home/*/.*/ /tmp/home /tmp/rsync2
building file list ... done
created directory /tmp/rsync2
home/
home/mary/
home/mary/.foo
home/mary/dir2/
home/mary/dir2/.file
home/mary/dir2/.dir3/
home/mary/dir2/.dir3/last
home/paul/
home/paul/.foo
home/paul/dir2/
home/paul/dir2/.file
home/paul/dir2/.dir3/
home/paul/dir2/.dir3/last

sent 370 bytes  received 98 bytes  936.00 bytes/sec
total size is 0  speedup is 0.00

For some reason, .dir1/ is not excluded if the option is given as —exclude=/tmp/home/*/.*/ or —exclude=tmp/home/*/.*/.

Ken Irving

> > > For some reason, .dir1/ is not excluded if the option is given as
> > > --exclude=/tmp/home/*/.*/ or --exclude=tmp/home/*/.*/.
> >
> > Expansion of unquoted globs in keyword arguments
> > seldom gives the intended result.  e.g.
> >
> > rsync --exclude=/home/*/.*/ /home/ /tmp/
> >
> > might expand to:
> >
> > rsync --exclude=/home/a/.x/ /home/a/.y/ /home/b/.x/ /home/b/.y/ /home/ /tmp/
> >
> > which copies a lot more than presumably intended.
> >
> > Mike Bird
>
> Duh... Thanks, I needed that.  The one that worked wouldn't match
> anything, so the globbing characters would pass through as is, but
> otherwise would expand as you say.   I've already deleted the test
> files, but I'm confident (well, sort of...) that those forms would work
> if quoted.

Well, tried that but they still don't work. This is probably because rsync is not dealing with the full paths (from /), so the longer patterns just don't match.

Ken Irving

>>> Is there any way to tell rsync to backup all the . files under my home but
>>> no any . directories? E.g., .profile in, but .gconf/ & .gnome/ etc out?
>>>
>> Don't use the recursive option?
>
> unfortunately that's not an option. I have to use it. The OP is for
> illustration purpose only.

That's contradicting what you said before. You want to rsync .files, so just drop the recursive option.

If you want to transfer all non-dot directories, maybe the easiest solution is to do rsync twice: once recursively without .files and once non-recursively for .files.

Johannes Wiedersich

> I should have said I was trying to backup the /home directory,
> although the exclude list hinted so. I was trying to cut the craps,
> not bring along a life long story, but apparently I trimmed too
> much. :-)
>
> Ok, fair enough. two pass is a solution. But I have to add every
> single user in my /home directory, and if there is change in account,
> i.e. more or less people, I'll be in trouble.

You could script that part. A trivial example:

cd /home
for FILE in $(ls); do file $FILE; done

> Anyway, if that's the only solution. fine.

I understand your frustration. A solution which allows you to distinguish between dot directories and other directories would be neater.

Liam O'Toole

There are seldom any dot dirs at other levels. If it's safe to ignore dot dirs at all levels you can use:

rsync -a --exclude='.*/' /home/ target

Mike Bird