Excluding directory when creating a .tar.gz file
Try removing the last / at the end of the directory path to exclude
tar -pczf MyBackup.tar.gz /home/user/public_html/ --exclude "/home/user/public_html/tmp"
Try moving the --exclude to before the include.
tar -pczf MyBackup.tar.gz --exclude "/home/user/public_html/tmp/" /home/user/public_html/
Yes, remove the trailing / and (at least in ubuntu 11.04) all the paths given must be relative or full path. You can't mix absolute and relative paths in the same command.
sudo tar -czvf 2011.10.24.tar.gz ./start-directory --exclude "home/user/start-directory/logs"will not exclude logs directory but
sudo tar -czvf 2011.10.24.tar.gz ./start-directory --exclude "./start-directory/logs"will work