If you have backed up your entire home directory, and are restoring it onto a new computer, sometimes you do not want to copy over all of the .dotfiles (hidden files and directories that start with a period) in your home directory. This can be especially useful if you are upgrading the operating system version and many applications are also upgraded, and you want to re-configure them manually. <\/p>\n
To restore everything BUT the .dotfiles in the main root directory you can use the following rsync command (the command must be executed from inside the backed up home directory):<\/p>\n
Note that this WILL copy all .dotfiles in directories under the main home directory.<\/p>\n I do recommend keeping all of your old home directory dotfiles in a separate “dotfile” directory, because invariably you will need something from in them (such as an SSH private key, GPG key, etc…)<\/p>\n You can copy JUST the .dotfiles from the home directory (including recursing into .dotdirectories) with the following command:<\/p>\n The .??* selects only files\/directories in the sourcedir that start with a dot. Note that .* alone would select ALL files and directories in the sourcedir.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you have backed up your entire home directory, and are restoring it onto a new computer, sometimes you do not want to copy over all of the .dotfiles (hidden files and directories that start with a period) in your … Continue reading rsync -av - --exclude=\"\/.*\" .\/ \/home\/NewHomeDir<\/code><\/p>\nrsync -av \/path\/to\/sourcedir\/.??* \/path\/to\/dest<\/code><\/p>\n