On Tue, Oct 07, 2003 at 05:07:50PM -0400, Jean-Francois Malouin wrote:
> one subdir contains more than 100GB [i.e. tape size] but
> also has something close to 2000 subdirs.

You could write a script to generate the excludes dynamically.

Or maybe you could rearrange the directories a bit: split them up
into tape-sized subsets, and use symlinks to provide the
appearance that they're all still in one directory.  That is, if
you currently have:
        /mountpoint/subdir/aardvark
        ...
        /mountpoint/subdir/zebra

turn it into something like:
        /mountpoint/subdir-storage/a-m/aardvark
        ...
        /mountpoint/subdir-storage/n-z/zebra
and:
        /mountpoint/subdir/aardvark -> ../subdir-storage/a-m/aardvark
        ...
        /mountpoint/subdir/zebra -> ../subdir-storage/n-z/zebra

--

|  | /\
|-_|/  >   Eric Siegerman, Toronto, Ont.        erics AT telepres DOT com
|  |  /
When I came back around from the dark side, there in front of me would
be the landing area where the crew was, and the Earth, all in the view
of my window. I couldn't help but think that there in front of me was
all of humanity, except me.
        - Michael Collins, Apollo 11 Command Module Pilot