Excluding directory when creating a .tar.gz file

Question

I have a /public_html/ folder, in that folder there's a /tmp/ folder that has like 70gb of files I don't really need.

Now I am trying to create a .tar.gz of /public_html/ excluding /tmp/

This is the command I ran:

tar -pczf MyBackup.tar.gz /home/user/public_html/ --exclude "/home/user/public_html/tmp/"

The tar is still being created, and by doing an ls -sh I can see that MyBackup.tar.gz already has about 30gb, and I know for sure that /public_html/ without /tmp/ doesn't have more than 1GB of files.

What did I do wrong?

Possible duplicate of [Shell command to tar directory excluding certain files/folders](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/984204/shell-command-to-tar-directory-excluding-certain-files-folders) — Organic Advocate, Aug 26 '16 at 18:20
the `-p` option has no meaning in terms of the create function, right!? — Martin Schneider, Feb 11 '19 at 13:50

Victor Parmar · Accepted Answer · 2022-10-21T08:40:41.433

236

Try removing the last / at the end of the directory path to exclude

tar -pczf MyBackup.tar.gz /home/user/public_html/ --exclude "/home/user/public_html/tmp"

edited Oct 21 '22 at 08:40

answered Nov 27 '10 at 04:53

Victor Parmar

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To exclude whole folder and its content: tar -pczvf MyBackup.tar.gz /home/user/public_html/ --exclude "/home/user/public_html/tmp/*" – Dr.jacky Nov 14 '16 at 06:08
I get `tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors.` in macos – prayagupa Jun 28 '18 at 23:32
Getting an error tar: Removing leading `/' from member names – SenG Nov 20 '18 at 10:02
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Does not work, I had to use `--exclude="/home/user/public_html/tmp` instead of `--exclude "/home/user/public_html/tmp` – Black Dec 05 '18 at 15:01
Indeed, exclude needs to be specified first – kghbln Mar 12 '19 at 09:48
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Disregard my previous comment which I cannot longer edit: `exclude` needs to be specified first as https://stackoverflow.com/users/3904223/oussaka notes. At least that's the only thing that worked for me – kghbln Mar 12 '19 at 10:01
this answer is wrong. tar doesn't even have --exclude "" command. it should be --exclude=PATTERN exclude files, given as a PATTERN – Don Dilanga Apr 15 '19 at 21:06
--exclude parameters should be placed BEFORE any sources. – scegg Dec 15 '19 at 06:56
Works perfectly - FreeBSD 13 – WiiLF May 03 '22 at 05:03

score 72 · Answer 2 · edited Feb 29 '16 at 14:05

72

Try moving the --exclude to before the include.

tar -pczf MyBackup.tar.gz --exclude "/home/user/public_html/tmp/" /home/user/public_html/

edited Feb 29 '16 at 14:05

Tamil Selvan C

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answered Nov 27 '10 at 04:57

Martin Algesten

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Thanks, this worked for me on an old Ubuntu 14.04 LTS box. – James Jan 10 '17 at 06:44
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I needed to do this on OS X as well. – TheJacobTaylor Apr 28 '17 at 17:54
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Worked for me after removing trailing slashes: `tar -pczf MyBackup.tar.gz --exclude "/home/user/public_html/tmp" /home/user/public_html` – Dziki_Jam Jan 12 '22 at 15:22

score 28 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 07 '16 at 08:46

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The correct command for exclude directory from compression is :

tar --exclude='./folder' --exclude='./upload/folder2' -zcvf backup.tar.gz backup/

Make sure to put --exclude before the source and destination items.

and you can check the contents of the tar.gz file without unzipping :

tar -tf backup.tar.gz

answered Oct 07 '16 at 08:46

oussaka

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Thanks... This worked for me on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS – Festus Ngor Jan 14 '21 at 09:35

score 22 · Answer 4 · edited Nov 13 '12 at 19:28

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Yes, remove the trailing / and (at least in ubuntu 11.04) all the paths given must be relative or full path. You can't mix absolute and relative paths in the same command.

sudo tar -czvf 2011.10.24.tar.gz ./start-directory --exclude "home/user/start-directory/logs"

will not exclude logs directory but

sudo tar -czvf 2011.10.24.tar.gz ./start-directory --exclude "./start-directory/logs"

will work

edited Nov 13 '12 at 19:28

Baz

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answered Aug 24 '11 at 06:42

user

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Work for me when i remove absolute path in exclude argument. – jruzafa Mar 02 '15 at 10:44
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The tip about mixing absolute and relative paths was key for me here – Dmitri DB Apr 14 '15 at 00:43

score 7 · Answer 5 · edited May 10 '18 at 00:48

You can also exclude more than one using only one --exclude. Like this example:

tar -pczf MyBackup.tar.gz --exclude={"/home/user/public_html/tmp","/home/user/public_html/data"} /home/user/public_html/

In --exclude= you must finish the directory name without / and must in between MyBackup.tar.gz and /home/user/public_html/

The syntax is:

tar <OPTIONS> <TARBALL_WILL_CREATE> <ARGS> <PATH_TO_COMPRESS>

score 5 · Answer 6 · answered Jun 15 '18 at 11:39

The accepted answer did not work for me, running unxutils tar on windows10. Instead, I had to put the files/dirs to archive as the last parameter, like this:

tar -pczf MyBackup.tar.gz --exclude "/home/user/public_html/tmp/" /home/user/public_html/

Then it worked.

score 5 · Answer 7 · answered Dec 05 '18 at 14:58

5

This worked for me:

tar -zcvf target.tar.gz target/ --exclude="target/backups" --exclude="target/cache"

answered Dec 05 '18 at 14:58

Black

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scegg · Answer 8 · 2020-04-15T04:24:44.540

tar -pczf <target_file.tar.gz> --exclude /path/to/exclude --exclude /another/path/to/exclude/* /path/to/include/ /another/path/to/include/*

Tested in Ubuntu 19.10.

The = after exclude is optional. You can use = instead of space after keyword exclude if you like.
Parameter exclude must be placed before the source.
The difference between use folder name (like the 1st) or the * (like the 2nd) is: the 2nd one will include an empty folder in package but the 1st will not.

score 3 · Answer 9 · answered Nov 30 '12 at 04:49

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Try this

tar -pczvf advancedarts.tar.gz /home/user/public_html/ --exclude /home/user/public_html/tmp

answered Nov 30 '12 at 04:49

Yogesh

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Ivan Avery Frey · Answer 10 · 2015-05-09T16:47:03.410

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The exclude option needs to include the = sign and " are not required.

--exclude=/home/user/public_html/tmp

edited May 09 '15 at 16:47

answered May 05 '15 at 15:29

Ivan Avery Frey

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" is required if the folder has space in the name – Black Dec 05 '18 at 14:59

Excluding directory when creating a .tar.gz file

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