IBM i PASE tar - Excluding files or directories

Question

I want to exclude some directories from an archive using the PASE tar command on an IBMi but the [-X Exclude File] option doesn't seems to work for me.

I tried using an exclude file that just contained a file name (/home/JSMITH/data/sub2/file2.txt) and then one that just contained a pattern (*.txt), and neither archive operation omitted anything.

Given the following directory structure:

/home/JSMITH/data               
/home/JSMITH/data/sub1          
/home/JSMITH/data/sub1/file1.txt
/home/JSMITH/data/sub2          
/home/JSMITH/data/sub2/file2.txt
/home/JSMITH/data/sub3          
/home/JSMITH/data/sub3/file3.txt

and the following command:

/qopensys/usr/bin/tar -cvf /home/JSMITH/test.tar -X /home/JSMITH/excludes.txt /home/JSMITH/data

The entire /home/JSMITH/data structure gets included in the resulting archive.

I have tried using the /home/JSMITH/excludes.txt file with either of these contents:

/home/JSMITH/data/sub2/file2.txt
or
*.txt

How does one exclude files/directories/patterns from the IBMi PASE tar command?

Answer 1

You need the full path in the exclude file. I created mine via ls /home/JSMITH/data/*.txt > /home/JSMITH/excludes.txt

If you're doing it by hand, make certain you haven't got any trailing whitespace. Also, I used Notepad++ when I created mine by hand. I found that the green screen edtf created an EBCDIC file with CRLF in it, and that didn't exclude for me.

IBM i 7.1