rsync issue

DeepBlue

I'm using rsync to copy files from a folder on my PC to an External Hard drive.
I don't want to copy all the folders within the source folder so am using --exclude-from to exclude the sub-folders I don't want copied thus my command looks like this:

rsync -avz /path_to_source_directory/  /path_to_target_directory/ --exclude-from list.txt

where list.txt is a simple listing of the sub-folders I want rsync to ignore.

However rysnc does ignore some of the sub-folders but not all. It continues to copy about half the folders across.
Can anyone help figure out why this is happening?

Johnboy1951

Only reason I can think of is that some of the paths are not complete or are somehow incorrect ....

DeepBlue

I use the following to pipe out the directory list (and then manually delete from the list the folders I want to copy.)

find . -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -type d -printf %P\\n | sort -d >list.txt

It shouldn't treat some folder names in a different fashion to others yet for some folders rsync recognises the pattern and excludes them and for others it doesn't.

DeepBlue

Ok, slightly solved.

The only difference between the sub-folders that weren't ignored as they should have been and the ones that were correctly ignored is that the ones that weren't ignored had a square bracket '' in the folder name. i.e. Holiday Photos [2007]
For some reason this throws off the pattern matching. Once those were removed all the sub-folders were ignored correctly.

Ideally I'd prefer not to have to rename the files so will continue looking for a solution rather than a workaround.

Johnboy1951

I guess you could try quoting the filenames in the list or maybe the -s option would work ..... that was for spaces in names but it may work I suppose for the brackets ....

DeepBlue

OSI wrote: »

Did you remember to escape special characters?

No, I didn't realise that '[' has a special meaning for rsync.

I imagine that replacing the '[' with a '?' may allow rsync to copy the file.

syklops

DeepBlue wrote: »

No, I didn't realise that '[' has a special meaning for rsync.

I imagine that replacing the '

No, just 'escape it' by putting a \ in front of it.

DeepBlue

syklops wrote: »

No, just 'escape it' by putting a \ in front of it.

From brief testing both methods work. It's good to have choice.