Shell command to tar directory excluding certain files/folders

You can have multiple exclude options for tar so

$ tar --exclude='./folder' --exclude='./upload/folder2' -zcvf /backup/filename.tgz .

etc will work. Make sure to put --exclude before the source and destination items.

linux shell archive tar

You can exclude directories with --exclude for tar.

If you want to archive everything except /usr you can use:

tar -zcvf /all.tgz / --exclude=/usr

In your case perhaps something like

tar -zcvf archive.tgz arc_dir --exclude=dir/ignore_this_dir

linux shell archive tar

Possible options to exclude files/directories from backup using tar:

Exclude files using multiple patterns

tar -czf backup.tar.gz --exclude=PATTERN1 --exclude=PATTERN2 ... /path/to/backup

Exclude files using an exclude file filled with a list of patterns

tar -czf backup.tar.gz -X /path/to/exclude.txt /path/to/backup

Exclude files using tags by placing a tag file in any directory that should be skipped

tar -czf backup.tar.gz --exclude-tag-all=exclude.tag /path/to/backup

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