tar directory and exclude multiple subdirectories

Question

I'm trying to tar a whole directory except some subdirs..

The dir my-base-dir is zipped but the excluded dirs/files are also included?

tar -cf my-base-dir/bak/site/site.tar my-base-dir --exclude=my-base-dir/bak/db/* --exclude=my-base-dir/bak/site/*

The excluded paths are correct relative to the current working dir.. Because the output tar file is put in one of them

Answer 1

You have to put --exclude option before the list of file names to put into (or get out of) the archive i.e.

tar --exclude='my-base-dir/bak/db/*' --exclude='my-base-dir/bak/site/*' -cf my-base-dir/bak/site/site.tar my-base-dir

or you can also use:

tar -cf my-base-dir/bak/site/site.tar --exclude='my-base-dir/bak/db/*' --exclude='my-base-dir/bak/site/*' my-base-dir