Tar directory contents without parent and exclude subdirectories/files

Question

Simplified directory structure:

/root/test
/root/test/dir1
/root/test/dir2
/root/test/dir3
/root/test/dir4

I want to tar /root/test so that when I extract the archive I get dir1 and dir2. I want to exclude dir3 and dir4 and possibly other files and subdirectories depending on the specific application of the command.

I realise there is a lot of tar examples and snippets around the net but I cannot seem to get a specific example or combine the ones available online to make this work as above. Any help would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

How about

cd /
tar cvf /tmp/test.tar --exclude="./root/test/dir[34]" ./root/test

Answer 2

I think I've managed to do it by putting together what has been said here with some experimentation.

tar -cvf test.tar --exclude-from=exclude --directory="/root/test" .

Where exclude is a file with:

dir3
dir4

Answer 3

if you have a limited number of folders you want to tar you can just do

tar -C /root/test -cf arch.tar dir1 dir2



root@pinkpony:~# ls /root/test/
dir1  dir2  dir3
root@pinkpony:~# pwd
/root
root@pinkpony:~# tar -C /root/test -cf arch.tar dir1 dir2
root@pinkpony:~# tar tf arch.tar 
dir1/
dir2/

EDIT (make the code included in comment readable):

if you have complex rules for building the list of directories you want to tar, you may want to start scripting:

root@pinkpony:~# (cd /root/test/ ; ls |grep -E '^dir(1|2)$' | xargs  tar cf /tmp/blah.tar )
root@pinkpony:~# tar tf /tmp/blah.tar 
dir1/
dir2/

you can use whatever you need instead of that silly ls |grep thingie, just an example; xargs is the part i want to point to your attention

Answer 4

FWIW you can also specify a file to list excludes for a longer list of files or directories. It's easier than adjusting a long command line.

Check out mycrpt for a quick, safe encryption method too. Sorry, slightly OT.