The following tar command will exclude all dot files and dot directories. tar -cvzf /media/bjackfly/bkup/bkup.gz --exclude '.*' --one-file-system /home/bjackfly In my case I want the dot files to be backed up in the home directory (.vimrc, .bashrc) etc. but not the dot directories /.config /.cache /.eclipse etc. Any Linux gurus with a command for this, or do I need to run a find into a tar or do two different tar commands which is non-ideal? One for dot files in the home directory and one for everything else?