Excluding files or directories from backups

The WABAC Machine allows you to exclude files and directories from the backup process (well, thanks rsync !).

For example, on OSX, I usually don't backup my .Trash and .cache directories. Some might want to exclude all their .pyc files.

Interested ?

Prerequisites

Remember

An exclude path is ALWAYS RELATIVE to the source

Even if starting with a /, an exclude path is ALWAYS RELATIVE to the source.

Allright ? Let's go on !

Exclusion file

First, create a file wherever you want (I keep mine with my WABACMachine.sh file, but that's not mandatory). You can name it however you want. Mine is called exclude.

We will put the exclusion patterns in this file.

Config file

Once your exclusion file is created, modifiy your WABACMachine configuration file. There is an exclude_file preference in it. Put the absolute path to your exclusion file here.

Patterns

In your exclusion file, put one pattern per line. If a pattern matches the name of the file that is to be backed up, the file won't be backed up.

A pattern can be a path (relative to the source) to a specific file or directory but it can also be more complicated and can include some wildcards. rsync supports several wildcards. Here are the most useful (for a full list, see rsync manpages):

• A * matches any path component, but it stops at slashes.
• A ** matches anything, including slashes.
• A ? matches a single character, except a slash.

Also remember that a pattern that ends with a slash will only match a directory. It won't match a regular file, nor a symlink or a device.

Examples

foo

Will exclude a file or a directory named foo in the source directory.

foo/

Will exclude a directory (nothing else) named foo in the source directory.

foo/bar

Will exclude a file (or directory) named bar stored in a directory named foo in the source directory.

foo/*/bar

Will exclude any file (or directory) named bar stored two levels below a directory named foo in the source directory.

foo/**/bar

Will exclude any file (or directory) named bar stored two or more levels below a directory named foo in the source directory.

f*r

Will exclude any file (or directory) with a name starting with f and ending with r stored in the source directory.

f**r

Will exclude any file (or directory) with a realtive path to the source starting with a f and ending with a r. This includes (foobar, foo/bar, foo/something/else/bar, ...).

*.txt

Will exclude all .txt files, no matter where they are stored below source.