https://www.thegeekstuff.com/2011/01/rsync-exclude-files-and-folders/


6 rsync Examples to Exclude Multiple Files and Directories using exclude-from
by Ramesh Natarajan on January 25, 2011

Rsync is very powerful tool to take backups, or sync files and directories between two different locations (or servers).

You know this already, as we presented you with practical examples on rsync earlier.

In a typical backup situation, you might want to exclude one or more files (or directories) from the backup. You might also want to exclude a specific file type from rsync.

This article explains how to ignore multiple files and/or directories during rsync with examples.

First, create a sample directory structure as shown below (with some empty files) that can be used for testing purpose.

$ cd ~
$ mkdir -p source/dir1/dir2
$ mkdir -p source/dir3
$ touch source/file1.txt
$ touch source/file2.txt
$ touch source/dir1/dir2/file3.txt
$ touch source/dir3/file4.txt

The above command will create a source directory (under your home directory) with the following structure.

source
- file1.txt
- file2.txt
- dir1
  - dir2
    - file3.txt
- dir3
  - file4.txt

   1.    Exclude a specific directory

If you don’t want to sync the dir1 (including all it’s subdirectories) from the source to the destination folder, use the rsync –exclude option as shown below.

$ rm -rf destination

$ rsync -avz --exclude 'dir1' source/ destination/
building file list ... done
created directory dest
./
file1.txt
file2.txt
dir3/
dir3/file4.txt

Verify to make sure dir1 is not copied from source directory to destination directory.

$ find destination
destination
destination/file2.txt
destination/file1.txt
destination/dir3
destination/dir3/file4.txt

   2.    Exclude multiple directories that matches a pattern

The following example will exclude any directory (or subdirectories) under source/ that matches the pattern “dir*”

$ rm -rf destination

$ rsync -avz --exclude 'dir*' source/ destination/
building file list ... done
created directory destination
./
file1.txt
file2.txt

Verify the destination directory to make sure it didn’t copy any directories that has the keyword “dir” in it.

$ find destination
destination
destination/file2.txt
destination/file1.txt

   3.    Exclude a specific file

To exclude a specific file, use the relative path of the file in the exclude option as shown below.

$ rm -rf destination

$ rsync -avz --exclude 'dir1/dir2/file3.txt' source/ destination/
building file list ... done
created directory destination
./
file1.txt
file2.txt
dir1/
dir1/dir2/
dir3/
dir3/file4.txt

Verify the destination directory to make sure it didn’t copy the specific file ( dir1/dir2/file3.txt in this example).

$ find destination
destination
destination/file2.txt
destination/file1.txt
destination/dir1
destination/dir1/dir2
destination/dir3
destination/dir3/file4.txt

   4.    Exclude path is always relative

If you are not careful, you might make this mistake.

In the following example, the exclude option seems to have a full path (i.e /dir1/dir2/file3.txt). But, from rsync point of view, exclude path is always relative, and it will be treated as dir1/dir2/file3.txt. In the example below, rsync will look for dir1 under source directory (and not under / root directory).

$ rsync -avz --exclude '/dir1/dir2/file3.txt' source/ destination/

So, the above command is exactly same as the following. Just to avoid confusion (and to make it easy to read), don’t give / in front of the exclude path.

$ rsync -avz --exclude 'dir1/dir2/file3.txt' source/ destination/

   5.    Exclude a specific file type

To exclude a specific file type that has a specific extension, use the appropriate pattern. For example, to exclude all the files that contains .txt as extension, do the following.

$ rsync -avz --exclude '*.txt' source/ destination/
building file list ... done
created directory destination
./
dir1/
dir1/dir2/
dir3/

Verify the destination directory to make sure it didn’t copy the *.txt files.

$ find destination
destination
destination/dir1
destination/dir1/dir2
destination/dir3

Note: The above is very helpful, when you want to backup your home directory, but exclude all those huge image and video files that has a specific file extension.

   6.    Exclude multiple files and directories at the same time

When you want to exclude multiple files and directories, you can always specify multiple rsync exclude options in the command line as shown below.

$ rsync -avz --exclude file1.txt --exclude dir3/file4.txt source/ destination/

Wait. What if I had tons of files that I want to exclude from rsync?

I can’t keep adding them in the command line using multiple –exclude, which is hard to read, and hard to re-use the rsync command for later.

So, the better way is to use rsync –exclude-from option as shown below, where you can list all the files (and directories) you want to exclude in a file.

First, create a text file with a list of all the files and directories you don’t want to backup. This is the list of files and directories you want to exclude from the rsync.

$ vim exclude-list.txt
file1.txt
dir3/file4.txt

Next, execute the rsync using –exclude-from option with the exclude-list.txt as shown below.

$ rm -rf destination

$ rsync -avz --exclude-from 'exclude-list.txt' source/ destination/
building file list ... done
created directory destination
./
file2.txt
dir1/
dir1/dir2/
dir1/dir2/file3.txt
dir3/

Verify the desitination directory to make sure the files and directories listed in the exclude-list.txt file is not backed-up.

$ find destination
destination
destination/file2.txt
destination/dir1
destination/dir1/dir2
destination/dir1/dir2/file3.txt
destination/dir3


further additions / amendments
==============================

   -   Felix Frank January 25, 2011, 10:32 am

The leading slash ‘/’ in the exclude is of great importance. It means “match only at the base of the source tree”. Assume the following:
– tools/
– src/
–program.c
–tools/

So there is the directory tools/ and src/tools/. –exclude tools/ should exclude both of those directories named “tools”, whereas –exclude /tools/ will only exclude the former (which is probably more often intended).

   -   Noel September 8, 2011, 11:12 am

Excluding all files but a specific match or directory and its subfiles.

rsync –include=’*/’ –include=’Dir/*’ –include=’*.jpg’ –exclude=’*’ -m

From what I can tell the ‘*/’ includes all directories – you need all parent directories of desired files included – and the -m then prunes all empty directories that had no matching files.

   -   Arthur N. Ketcham July 25, 2012, 2:49 pm

Using the –exclude option, –exclude ‘dir*’ will not work correctly. With globbing, you need to use double quotes. So that should be corrected to:
–exclude”dir*”

   -   JD December 5, 2012, 9:24 pm

IMPORTANT NOTE:

NO SPACES AT THE END OF EACH LINE for your –exclude-from file

AND

Exclude path is always relative is NOT TRUE exclude path is only relative to the source directory if you begin your patterns with ‘/’ otherwise the pattern will match ANYWHERE in the source directory…

   -   iBro December 12, 2012, 8:42 pm

Yes, I agree with JD.

I tried with the following structure and I tried to exlude only ‘dir1/dir3’ , but when I use ‘–exclude dir3’, ‘dir1/dir2/dir3’ and ‘dir1/dir4/dir3’ also get excluded.

/tmp $ mkdir -p dir1/dir{2,3,4}/dir{1,2,3}
/tmp $ find dir1
dir1
dir1/dir3
dir1/dir3/dir1
dir1/dir3/dir3
dir1/dir3/dir2
dir1/dir2
dir1/dir2/dir1
dir1/dir2/dir3
dir1/dir2/dir2
dir1/dir4
dir1/dir4/dir1
dir1/dir4/dir3
dir1/dir4/dir2

/tmp $ rsync -av –exclude dir3 dir1/ dir2/
sending incremental file list
./
dir2/
dir2/dir1/
dir2/dir2/
dir4/
dir4/dir1/
dir4/dir2/

sent 146 bytes received 39 bytes 370.00 bytes/sec
total size is 0 speedup is 0.00

/tmp $ find dir2
dir2
dir2/dir2
dir2/dir2/dir1
dir2/dir2/dir2
dir2/dir4
dir2/dir4/dir1
dir2/dir4/dir2

   -   everge48 March 21, 2013, 1:17 pm

Here are some examples of exclude/include matching:

–exclude “*.o” would exclude all filenames matching *.o

–exclude “/foo” would exclude a file called foo in the transfer-root directory

–exclude “foo/” would exclude any directory called foo

–exclude “/foo/*/bar” would exclude any file called bar two levels below a directory called foo in the transfer-root directory

–exclude “/foo/**/bar” would exclude any file called bar two or more levels below a directory called foo in the transfer-root directory

–include “*/” –include “*.c” –exclude “*” would include all directories and C source files

–include “foo/” –include “foo/bar.c” –exclude “*” would include only foo/bar.c (the foo/ directory must be explicitly included or it would be excluded by the “*”)

   -   Mark March 27, 2015, 2:33 am

Hi! You’ve made a mistake in section 4 “Exclude path is always relative”.

It’s true that it is always relative but it’s NOT the same using the leading slash or not to do so. The leading slash indicates the full qualified path beginning at your given transfer-root directory.

See also the man page of rsync:

“””
Here are some examples of exclude/include matching:
o “- /foo” would exclude a file (or directory) named foo in the transfer-root directory
o “- foo/” would exclude any directory named foo

===============

   -   https://superuser.com/questions/536561/rsync-using-regex-to-include-only-some-files

I would suggest to use the filter option of rsync. For your example just type:

rsync -vam -f'+ *[Nn][Aa][Mm][E]*' -f'+ */' -f'- *' a b

the first filter rule tells rsync what patterns to include. The second rule is needed to tell rsync to inspect all directories on its traversal. To prevent empty dirs from inclusion they are excluded explicitly by -m option. The last filter rule tells rsync to dispose all remaining patterns that still didn't match so far.


edited Jan 15 '13 at 18:04
answered Jan 15 '13 at 17:48
sparkie
2,10011 gold badge88 silver badges1010 bronze badges

    Sweet. This worked as well. I was getting the folder a inside of b, that got fixed by using a/ b/ as the source and destination. Thanks! – user1957413 Jan 16 '13 at 6:04 

Use -f'+ *[Nn][Aa][Mm][E]**' (two stars at the end) to include the contents of all directories with a specific name. – phobic Nov 11 '16 at 13:51


============================
see man rsync: INCLUDE/EXCLUDE PATTERN RULES