GNU Tar Problems

[Victor Tung]

Hello,

I recently tried to use GNU Tar in archiving a directory, and I tried to 
exclude directories such as .netscape/cache, etc. It seems I can specify 
 to exclude a directory from that path that I am 'tar'ring, but I 
cannot exclude a directory that is nested deeper from where I am 
executing the 'tar' command. In essence, I was trying to back up my home 
directory, and there exists a $HOME/.backup, as well as a 
$HOME/.netscape/cache. I was able to exclude .backup, but not 
.netscape/cache. I probably spent a few hours looking at this, and tried 
many combinations and it doesn't seem to work. Apparently, the exclude 
options only take wildcards for files but not directories. I then tried 
it on the regular UNIX tar (Solaris tar), and after a few tries, I was 
able to get it to work and exclude the directories I had wanted to exclude.
Is there a way currently to exclude directories nested deeper than the 
tar directory, or is there no other way to do this on GNU tar.

Thanks for any incite into this.

-Victor