On Thu, Nov 08, 2018 at 05:20:12PM -0800, Craig Hartnett wrote: > Just signed up
Welcome! > (e.g., tarsnap --dry-run --print-stats --humanize-numbers > -c /media/USER/PATH > --exclude /media/USER/PATH/.Trash-1000 /media/USER/PATH/lost > +found /media/USER/PATH/OTHER-EXCLUDED-DIRECTORY) Careful there! "--exclude" only accepts a single value. If you want to exclude multiple values on the command-line (which is not recommended; I would definitely put them in your config file), you would need: --exclude /media/USER/PATH/.Trash-1000 --exclude /media/USER/PATH/lost+found --exclude /media/USER/PATH/OTHER-EXCLUDED-DIRECTORY > So here I am today and now wanting to run my first real back-up and I'm > stuck on the same problem. The information in step 1A at > http://www.tarsnap.com/simple-usage.html still seems to require me to > put my list of included and excluded paths on the command line. Why is > this? Why doesn't tarsnap just get the list from tarsnap.conf? Hmm, I'll tweak simple-usage.html somewhat. tarsnap does indeed get the values from tarsnap.conf, with three exceptions: -c: tarsnap doesn't know which mode (create/extract/test/etc.), so we need to give this on the command-line -f "$(uname -n)-$(date +%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S)": since the archive name changes every day, we need to give it here. /MY/DATADIR: we need to give the "root" directory to include (running "tarsnap -c -f foo" doesn't work, even if we have an "include bar" in the config file). > exclude /media/USER/PATH/.Trash-1000 > exclude /media/USER/PATH/lost+found > exclude /media/USER/PATH/_hold > > include /media/USER/PATH > include /home/USER > include /etc > include /opt Please delete the "include" lines, then use this command-line: /usr/local/bin/tarsnap -c \ -f "$(uname -n)-$(date +%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S)" \ /media/USER/PATH \ /home/USER \ /etc \ /opt (apologies for the confusing name of "--include"... it should really be "--include-only". Unfortunately the name came from the 1980s-era tar(1) program, is still in use nowadays, and we don't want to break backwards compatibility with the expected behaviour of tar(1).) For more information, please see: http://www.tarsnap.com/selecting-files.html including the warnings about trying it with --dry-run before doing a real backup. I think that in your case, you don't need "include" at all. Cheers, - Graham PS: I almost recommended that you kept the "include" lines and tried: /usr/local/bin/tarsnap -c \ -f "$(uname -n)-$(date +%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S)" \ / However, when I was just about to send the email, I noticed: - The process of recursing into subdirectories is also affected. Adding this to the config file: include /home and then attempting to back up / results in nothing being backed up. http://www.tarsnap.com/selecting-files.html So clearly I already made that mistake a few years ago when I was writing that page! - Graham
