To all who provided helpful input so far, thanks.
From your collective responses, I now believe it would be better to
develop an "include" list for rsyncing instead of a "exclude" list and trying to mirror the whole thing.
My real, main objective is to be able to get a config working on a local machine for FTP, Postfix, Apache, etc. then quickly getting a remote server up and running with those configs in a quick fashion. I would like to have my configuration "portable" so to speak so I may change providers on a whim if desired, and to do minimal configuration on the remote server to quickly get it to the stage and setup of my main, home box.
From your input I gather a better way to accomplish that goal would be
to have the remote hosting company turn up the server with Centos on it, then I can yum update/install the necessary packages to it, then rsync most of my software package configs to it.
I think <smile>.
Thanks again for the help. Further coaching welcome...
Best, Scott