A better way to include/exclude

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1

I prefer excluding over including files when doing backups, so I simply backup / and pass a list of excludes via --exclude-file, like so:

**.egg-info
**.lck
**.lock
**.log
**.pyc
**.swp
**~

/bin
/boot
/dev
/lib*
/media
/opt
/proc
/run
/sbin
/sys
/tmp

[...]

Regarding /var it’s a bit more complex. I can’t simply exclude /var, because I want to keep certain directories inside /var, say /var/spool/cron/crontabs.

A pattern like the following would obviously not work:

/var                           # exlcude /var
!/var/spool/cron/crontabs      # ... but include the crontabs

So, instead I have to do this:

# Exclude everything just below /var
/var/*

# ... but keep /var/spool, exclude its contents
!/var/spool
/var/spool/*

# ... but keep /var/spool/cron, exclude its contents
!/var/spool/cron
/var/spool/cron/*

# ... but keep the crontabs
!/var/spool/cron/crontabs

This is very cumbersome. Are there easier ways to achieve the same?

1 Like
2

So far there’s no easier way. In theory, it should be possible for restic to generate the missing excludes to allow !/var/spool/cron/crontabs to just work. However, there are probably quite a few pitfalls there that would have to be sorted out first. Please open an issue on Github, we don’t track feature requests in the forum.

3

Sorry to piggy back this issue, I’ve got some ready to use exclude lists for restic at npbackup/excludes at main · netinvent/npbackup · GitHub

Would love to get a second look at what I may have missed.

IMO there would be a way, needing restic to support regex excludes, or perhaps add /var/spool/cron/crontabs to include lists and make sure includes override excludes.

@virvum, please keep me posted, this subject is of high interest for me ^^