Rsync how to include directories but not files ?

Question

Hi,

I have a directory structure and files like this

data/
data/a.txt
data/folder/
data/folder/b.txt
data/folder/folder/
data/folder/folder/c.txt
...

a.txt, b.txt, and c.txt are large files that are computer-generated and renewed frequently. They should NOT be backuped -- but I want to backup the directory structure :

data/
data/folder/
data/folder/folder/

How can I do this with rsync and --exclude-from, without specifying every folder, but something like rsync -a data/* --exclude-from=exclude.rsync "" --onlyfoldersandnotfiles""?

Thanks for help !

Answer 1

To be fairly honest depending on what you want to acomplish a simple ssh would be ok:

find /data/ -type d -exec ssh user@host mkdir /destination/{} \;

Side note: this would probably be slow if u have a huge folder tree

---

i guess the best you could attempt without the need of external help (ie; extra programs) would be:

• --exclude "*.*" to exclude all files

• or more specific --exclude "*.txt"

• or --exclude 'a.txt' --exclude 'b.txt' --exclude 'c.txt'

• or like you have already --exclude-from '/my_exclude_list'

my_exclude_list content:

a.txt
b.txt
c.txt

---

I belive your best way around this would be to use an extra program to create your --exclude-from list with all the files within your directory tree, one way of doing this would be:

find data/ -type f > my_exclude_file

The above command would fine all regular file type and dump it into my_exclude_file which you could then use for your rsync command --exclude-from 'my_exclude_list'

Your final command to this would be:

find /my/directory/tree_data/ -type f > exclude.rsync; rsync -a data/* --exclude-from=exclude.rsync