Mike, read the man pages, your syntax is wrong and it is clearly stated when you: $ man rsync With that said, the syntax that you are concerned with in this instance is: rsync [OPTION...] SRC... [USER@]HOST:DEST A couple of details that may bite you: Don't rely on '~' to address a directory on the destination box. The '~' will be interpreted by the shell before the command is handed to 'rsync' and, if the tree in both boxes don't match, you'll get a mysterious error that won't make sense until you realize that 'bash globbing' is handing your 'rsync' the wrong path' That is also valid for: --exclude=.*mozilla* if '.*mozilla*' resolves to more than one path you will get interesting (and undecipherable) error messages. I would do it as: --exclude='.*mozilla*' So, the 'proper' construction would something like: $ rsync -vva \ --exclude='/home/bmike1/Pictures/*' \ --exclude='.*mozilla*' \ --exclude='.*chromium*' \ xbmc@192.168.0.3:/home/xbmc/backupdirectoryname And remember: if you have any question, you will get any answer... :) ET Michael Havens writes: > I want to have a backup of the hard drives of the computers in my house on > the other computer. What I was doing before is making each ~ identical. > Would the following command give me the desired effect? > > rsync -vva --exclude=/home/bmike1/Pictures/* --exclude=.*mozilla* > --exclude=.*chromium* ~/* *xbmc@192.168.0.3:/home/xbmc/*backupdirectoryname*; > rsync -vva --exclude=/home/bmike1/Pictures/* --exclude=.*mozilla* > --exclude=.*chromium* xbmc@192.168.0.3:/home/xbmc/ *~/backupdirectoryname* > * > * > is this correct? > > :-)~MIKE~(-: --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss