[SOLVED] tar .gvfs question

[Ivan Gorrion]

Trying to make a backup of ~ :

sudo tar cvf /media/guey/home.tar /home

And then I get tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors
So I remove the v and I see:
tar: Removing leading `/' from member names
tar: /home/ivan/.gvfs: Cannot stat: Permission denied
tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors

Go online and find that I should use --exclude="/home/ivan/.gvfs/*" not sure where everyone just seems to get it and furthermore problem solved.
I tried
sudo tar cf /media/guey/home.tar --exclude=~/.gvfs
sudo tar c --exclude=/home/ivan/.gvfs/* f /media/guey/home.tar /home
sudo tar cf /media/guey/home.tar --exclude="/home/ivan/.gvfs/*" /home

Checked online again and found that to get rid of that error use --one-file-system to disregard the mount point and then again seems like it magically goes away for everyone.
sudo tar cf /media/guey/home.tar --exclude="/home/ivan/.gvfs/*" --one-file-system /home
sudo tar --one-file-system -c -f /media/guey/home.tar /home
sudo tar cf /media/guey/home.tar --one-file-system /home

I'm running out of combinations here..what foolish thing am I doing wrong this time ?
Also, it creates the archive regardless. It is good regardless of not including .gvfs ?

Thanks for reading and any help you can give.

[Gareth Jones]

Personally I wouldn't try to back up my home while it was in use like that.

I'd log out, switch to a virtual terminal (Ctrl+Alt+Fx) and log in there as root, or use a dedicated backup program.

Other than that, have you tried just "--exclude=.gvfs"? (To exclude all .gvfs directories, not just the contents of one in one home directory?)

Gareth