> Note carefully that Jon says "like".  The "include" keyword does *not*
> do patterns.  You must explicitly list each item to be included.

That's ok,  provided I can list directories ... something like this:

./var/spool/mail
./usr/local
./etc
./var/log/samba

... and just catch those directories and everything in them.  That
will work, I presume?  The manpage says soemthing confusing about not
allowing more than one '/', but gnutar's -T option seems to support
that just fine.

-- 
                                        thanks,
                
                                        Will