Creating a tarball of the files on your server is a quick and easy way of completing a backup. The only issue is that in a real world scenario there’s always some file types or directories which you really don’t wish to backup be it space concern or otherwise.
Skip Images when Creating TAR.GZ
To skip images when creating a tarball use the –exclude parameter with the image extension. Please note that extension names are case sensitive so *.jpg is not the same as *.JPG.
tar -cvf myBackup.tar.gz --exclude='*.png' --exclude='*.gif' --exclude='*JPG' --exclude='*.JPEG' --exclude='*.jpeg' myFiles
Skip Folders
Skipping directories can be achieved using the same –exclude parameter. the example below will not archive the logs or the backup directories.
tar -cvf myBackup.tar.gz --exclude='logs' --exclude='backup' myFiles