rsync - Jul 2007 - Beginner needs a guide

Hi,
I'm trying to get rsync to use a list of directories and their contents to
to another drive on a Windows XP machine.


I tried the command 

rsync -rDPt --delete 
--include-from=c:\include_list.txt
--exclude-from=c:\exclude_list.txt 
/cygdrive/d/source/ /cygdrive/e/backup

But the trouble is that no matter what I put in the include_list file it
always copies everything in source. I even tried having an empty
include_list file and it still copied everything across! 

Can someone tell me the logic behind this and how to get it to work?

I couldn't find any examples of how to do this online.

Sorry for being such a 'Windows' wimp. ;-)

-- 
Stuart Halliday



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On Fri 13 Jul 2007, Stuart Halliday wrote:
> 
> I tried the command 
> 
> rsync -rDPt --delete 
> --include-from=c:\include_list.txt
> --exclude-from=c:\exclude_list.txt 
> /cygdrive/d/source/ /cygdrive/e/backup
> 
> But the trouble is that no matter what I put in the include_list file it
> always copies everything in source. I even tried having an empty
> include_list file and it still copied everything across! 
Well, the default is of course to include everything, otherwise you
could never copy files without having an include list, which would be
pretty silly.

Take some time to read the rsync manual page's section on include and
exclude patterns; it's a pretty complicated issue if you're not used to
it, and spending some time understanding it will help. Basically, if you
only want to copy some files, include those and then exclude all others.
Make sure you don't exclude the directories those files are in...


Paul Slootman