Rsync only certain directories and only certain sub-directories within them

In /opt I have many different directories, some of which contain _pkg_linux_deb_ or _pkg_android_apk_ in the middle of their name. Those directories also contain many sub-directories, one of which is lastSuccessful which in turn contains archive as its own sub-directory. I want the files from those these archive sub-directories to be rsync'ed, retaining the whole directory structure, e.g. foo_pkg_linux_deb_bar/lastSuccessful/archive/dir1/dir2/dirN/foo.ext

Here is the rule I came up with, but it doesn't seem to work:

rsync -rnvm --include='/*(_pkg_linux_deb_|_pkg_android_apk_)*/lastSuccessful/archive/***' --exclude='*' /opt/ dest/

The following uses bash's expansion and it does work, but the destination doesn't contain the whole directory structure, it's missing *{_pkg_linux_deb_,_pkg_android_apk_}*/lastSuccessful/archive/ directories, putting only the contents of archive/ into dest/

rsync -rnvm /opt/*{_pkg_linux_deb_,_pkg_android_apk_}*/lastSuccessful/archive/ dest/

2 Answers

The main problem is that as rsync recursively descends through a folder hierarchy, it only enters directories that match its filter rules. So, in your first example, rsync never gets to a lastSuccessful directory, as the rule excludes the directory above it!

Instead you need to do something like this:

rsync -rnvm --include='/*_pkg_linux_deb_*/' --include='/*_pkg_android_apk_*/' --include='lastSuccessful/' --include='archive/***' --exclude='*' /opt/ dest/

I found your problem while googling, because I have the same. To only pick certain sub(sub)folders I use a filter-list (far better oversight)

rsync -arzvi --include-from=/home/frank/filters.txt

Within that, it's a bit ugly, but you have to…

• 'open up' every level (in my case, I don't want any user-level hidden dirs, except a very few...)
• then 'wipe' what you don't need

snippet:

+ home/*/.ssh/***
+ home/*/.config/
+ home/*/.config/plank/***
+ home/*/.config/dconf/***
+ home/*/.config/Code/
+ home/*/.config/Code/User/
+ home/*/.config/Code/User/*.json
# hide the rest ( .local, .wine, most of .config ...)
- home/*/.*/
# 'wipe' all the from above step-by-step subdirectories directories
- home/*/.*/***

( home/… vs. /home/… makes no difference, btw )