rsync - Nov 2003 - an --exclude-from question

It's probalby a common question, and I've read the man pages and such,
but
I need a little bit more help getting this specific task to work right.

Basically, I want to mirror home directory structures, and only two files
within each home directory, to other machines from a central server. Those
files are ~/.spamassassin/user_prefs and ~/.procmailrc. Other files should
not be transfered, so I'm looking for some sort of wildcard statement to
do that.  If I just put a * in there, nothing transfers. If I want to 
transfer other files at a later date, I'll add them into the file with
+'s.
I would like to not have to specify each filename that I want to exclude.

Thanks,
Jason


This is all on the client machine.

mc1:/usr/local/mis/etc # cat mirror.home.exclude 
+*/
+.spamassassin/user_prefs
+.procmailrc
+/home/*
.forward
public_html
mc1:/usr/local/mis/etc # cat ../sbin/mirror.home 
#!/bin/bash
/usr/local/bin/rsync -avvW --delete 
--exclude-from=/usr/local/mis/etc/mirror.home.exclude --force --stats 
root@10.0.18.27::home /home
 mc1:/usr/local/mis/etc # mirror.home 
opening tcp connection to 10.0.18.27 port 873
receiving file list ... 
done
expand file_list to 4000 bytes, did move
excluding directory daydream/public_html because of pattern public_html
deleting in .
delta-transmission disabled for local transfer or --whole-file
daydream/.bash_history is uptodate
daydream/.bashrc is uptodate
daydream/.profile is uptodate
jp/.bash_history is uptodate
jp/.bashrc is uptodate
jp/.muttrc is uptodate
jp/.profile is uptodate
jp/.spamassassin/user_prefs is uptodate
jp/Mailbox is uptodate
jp/passwd is uptodate
rsync[2509] (receiver) heap statistics:
  arena:         135168   (bytes from sbrk)
  ordblks:            6   (chunks not in use)
  smblks:             2
  hblks:              0   (chunks from mmap)
  hblkhd:             0   (bytes from mmap)
  usmblks:            0
  fsmblks:           40
  uordblks:        6888   (bytes used)
  fordblks:      128280   (bytes free)
  keepcost:       90576   (bytes in releasable chunk)

Number of files: 14
Number of files transferred: 0
Total file size: 8819 bytes
Total transferred file size: 0 bytes
Literal data: 0 bytes
Matched data: 0 bytes
File list size: 320
Total bytes written: 175
Total bytes read: 356

wrote 175 bytes  read 356 bytes  1062.00 bytes/sec
total size is 8819  speedup is 16.61
mc1:/usr/local/mis/etc #

-- 
/*
Jason Philbrook   |   Midcoast Internet Solutions - Internet Access,
    KB1IOJ        |  Hosting, and TCP-IP Networks for Midcoast Maine
 http://f64.nu/   |             http://www.midcoast.com/
*/

On Fri, Oct 31, 2003 at 11:59:54AM -0500, Jason Philbrook
wrote:
> Basically, I want to mirror home directory structures, and only two files
> within each home directory, to other machines from a central server. Those
> files are ~/.spamassassin/user_prefs and ~/.procmailrc.
Since the default is to include things, you need to make sure that you
exclude what you don't want sent.  The syntax for adding an include into
the exclude list is to prefix it with a "+ ", not a "+". 
Also, remember
that the base of the excludes is the base directory of the transfer, so
the /home/* is useless if you're transferring dirs from inside /home.
Try something like this for mirror.home.exclude (assuming you want all
directories to be created if not yet there except for the ~/public_html
dir):

# excludes /home/USER/public_html dir from transfer:
/*/public_html/
# includes all other directories
+ */
# include the files we're interested in:
+ /*/.spamassassin/user_prefs
+ /*/.procmailrc
# exclude everything else:
*

I don't understand why you're using --delete, though--I'd suggest
removing that option.

..wayne..