Exclude hidden files/folders from backup

[Ken Schweigert]

On Wed, Mar 31, 2004 at 02:58:05PM +0100, Dene Stringfellow wrote:
> Thanks Bill, Ken and  Patrick for your input.
> 
> I've done the following:
> 
> 1)
> Following Bill's advice - I presumed Ken's find command is what Bill
> meant by using the depth and file type parameters.
> 
> 2)
> Following Ken's advice I ran the command:
> 
> find ./ ! -type f ! -type d -exec ls -l {} \;       (BTW - how would I
> reverse this?)

To reverse this you would just remove the "not" operators or the "!".  The
line kinda reads like "find files in this directory that are not type f 
(regular file) and not type d (directory) and execute a 'ls' on what you
find".

> 
> firstly from:
> /root - which only returned the following 3 entries:
> 
> lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           13 Mar  7 18:08
> ./.kde/tmp-RCL242 -> /tmp/kde-root
> lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           17 Mar  7 18:08
> ./.kde/socket-RCL242 -> /tmp/ksocket-root
> lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           27 Mar 31 12:00
> ./.DCOPserver_RCL242_:0 -> /root/.DCOPserver_RCL242__0
> 
> / - which returned thousands of entries (- too many to list) which
> happily spooled past the screen for about 15 minutes until it
> finished!!!!
> 
> /home (- the directory I want to back up) - returned no entries at all!
> 
> 3)
> Following Patrick's advice I ran the command:
> 
> tar --exclude .AppleDouble --exclude .AppleDesktop -cvf /dev/null /home
> 
> The command listed all the files to be backed up within a minute without
> stalling or locking up!!!

Good.  That means tar isn't the problem.

> 
> I then tried above command replacing /dev/null with /dev/st0:
> Excruciatingly slow!!!
<snip> 
> At around 5Mb/hour this isn't going to backup the server data overnight!!!

Something is definately wrong if that's the rate you're getting.  Maybe it
has something to do with the tape drive seeking.  I don't have much experience
with tape drives, but here's a link to a howto that has a script at the end.
Maybe it'll help.

http://kmself.home.netcom.com/Linux/FAQs/backups.html


> As I mentioned before, there is no problem backing up to this tape drive
> using Retrospect under MacOS 9 - 367Mb backed up and verified in about
> 26 minutes or so!
> 
> Any further thoughts or suggestions welcomed.

With only 367MB to backup have you thought about using CDRW to for you 
media?

Another site that might help:	http://www.linux-backup.net/

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