Exclude hidden files/folders from backup

[Ken Schweigert]

On Tue, Mar 30, 2004 at 09:30:56AM +0100, Dene Stringfellow wrote:
> Ken/Bill,
> 
> Thanks for your replies. I tested the following command in a shell:
> 
> tar --exclude .AppleDouble --exclude .AppleDesktop -cvf /dev/tape /home
> 
> everything seemed to be going fine to begin within - the .AppleDouble
> and .AppleDesktop files were excluded as requested.
> 
> However, the process seemed to grind to a halt after about 10 small
> files. I waited about 30 minutes to see if anything had changed.
> Nothing! I was unable to kill the process off (- couldn't gain access to
> another terminal or via webmin)! All I could do was force a reboot!
> 
> I'm running YDL 3.0 on an Apple Workgroup Server 8550/132 with an
> internal Archive Python DDS2 DAT Drive 02830-XXX version 5.76 on SCSI ID
> 2.
> 
> A backup of 367Mb under MacOS 9 using Retrospect 3.0i completed and
> verified without any problems in 26 minutes and 32 seconds!
> 
> I don't know where to look to see what is going wrong. Has anyone got
> any ideas what might be happening and/or where I can look to track what
> is going on?


I'm inclined to agree with Bill; there's probably a special file like a pipe,
device file or a symlink.  If it's a symlink, and it's across filesystems,
that might cause some trouble.  To find all files that aren't regular files
or directories, try:

	[ken@byteme ken]$ find ./ ! -type f ! -type d -exec ls -l {} \;

Have a look at that list and see if there's anything linking across to 
another filesystem.  If so, you could try the inverse of the above command
and pipe that to your tar command.

-- 
Ken Schweigert, Network Administrator
Byte Productions, LLC
http://www.byte-productions.com