How to Compress Directory Excluding Large Files Ubuntu

This article provides a straightforward method for compressing a directory in Ubuntu while excluding files that exceed a specific size threshold. You will learn how to combine the find and tar commands to generate a compressed archive containing only smaller files, saving space and processing time.

To achieve this, you need to use the command line terminal. The process involves using the find utility to locate files below your size limit and piping that list directly into the tar command for compression. This method ensures that large logs, videos, or database dumps are left out of the final archive.

Open your terminal and navigate to the parent directory of the folder you wish to compress. Use the following command structure, adjusting the path and size as needed:

find /path/to/directory -type f -size -100M -print0 | tar -czvf backup.tar.gz --null -T -

In this command, /path/to/directory is the folder you want to archive. The -size -100M flag tells the system to select files smaller than 100 Megabytes. You can change 100M to 50M, 1G, or any other value depending on your requirements. The -print0 option ensures file names with spaces are handled correctly.

The second part of the command uses tar with the -czvf flags to create a gzipped archive named backup.tar.gz. The --null -T - arguments instruct tar to read the file list from the previous command safely. Once the command finishes executing, you will have a compressed file containing only the data that met your size criteria.

You can verify the contents of the new archive by listing the files inside it without extracting them. Run tar -tzvf backup.tar.gz to see the included files. This confirms that any file larger than your specified limit has been successfully excluded from the compression process.