Tar backup command for exclude backup files & cache & include only httpdocs subdirectories

I am looking for a tar command that meets the following requirements:

I want to exclude all files ending with: backwpup & .zip (in between and before can be any e.g. uploads/123backwpup-123.zip) I want to exclude all folders in the area /media/backup/ & /application/cache/

I start at a level that looks like this:

• example.com
• example.de
• example.org

With subdirectories for each:

1. /etc/
2. /httpdocs/
3. /lib/
4. ...

Only the content of /httpdocs/ needs to be saved.

I tried it with command:

tar --exclude={"*backwpup*.zip", "*/media/backup/*", "*/application/cache/*"} -czvf backup.tar.gz **/httpdocs

But unfortunately backups with path wp-content/uploads/backwpup-4578-backups/2022-10-31_12-22-31_IKXUCSLD01.zip are still included.

You can try using the following tar command:

tar --exclude='backwpup.zip' --exclude='/media/backup/' --exclude='/application/cache/' -czvf backup.tar.gz example.com/httpdocs example.de/httpdocs example.org/httpdocs

This command excludes all files ending with "backwpup" or ".zip", as well as folders in the specified locations. It also only includes the "httpdocs" sub-directories in each domain directory

Perhaps this way?

find * -type d \( -path '*/media/backup/*' -o -path '*/application/cache/*' \) -prune -o -path '*/httpdocs/*' -type f ! -name '*backwpup*.zip' -print0 | tar -czvf backup.tar.gz --null -T -

Assuming you are using GNU tar, please see the documentation on how to exclude files: https://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_node/exclude.html This details the pattern matching: https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/glob.7.html

Assuming you use GNU BASH you could loop through the directories using a for loop: https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Looping-Constructs.html using filename expansion (https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Filename-Expansion.html)

At the end of this page are good examples: https://linuxize.com/post/bash-for-loop/