Re: [BackupPC-users] Backing up wildcarded subdirectories

[Craig B. <cba...@us...>]

"Michael Pellegrino" writes:

> First off, excellent program.  This is one of the most thought out and well
> designed programs I have encountered.  Using it along with mod_auth_smb
> really allows me some flexibility for backing up my windows clients.

Thanks.

> I am running into a slight problem.
> 
> When trying to back up this path:
> 
> '/home/backuppc/pc/*/config.pl'
> 
> I receive this error when the dump runs:
> 
> 2004-05-15 00:17:26 full backup started for directory
> /usr/share/backuppc/cgi-bin
> 2004-05-15 00:17:26 full backup started for directory
> /home/backuppc/pc/*/config.pl
> 2004-05-15 00:17:28 Got fatal error during xfer (No files dumped for share
> /home/backuppc/pc/*/config.pl)
> 2004-05-15 00:17:33 Backup aborted (No files dumped for share
> /home/backuppc/pc/*/config.pl)
> 
> If I manually run "tar czvf blah.tar.gz /home/backuppc/pc/*/config.pl" it
> works fine, backing up the file "config.pl" from all of the "pc"
> subdirectories.
> 
> Is there some other command line option I need to tweak?
> 
> Where I really need this is actually on some "common" Windows boxes to
> backup the paths
> 
> 'documents and settings/*/my documents'
> 
> I am trying to avoid just backing up 'document and settings' as that
> increases the size by over 100x as it includes useless temporary files and
> such.

The problem is that wildcards are handled in different ways depending
upon the xfer method.  That is true for both files to backup and the
include/exclude lists.  For example, in your tar example the wildcard is
expanded by the shell on the local file system, so it works correctly.

Smbclient (which is used when XferMethod is smb) has very limited
wildcard capability, so it is not capable of including just
'documents and settings/*/my documents'.

I'd recommend trying rsync, which has much richer exclude/include
syntax.  You will have to read the manual page carefully to do it
correctly, but with rsync you certainly can backup just:

    documents and settings/*/my documents

You will probably need to specify the relevant --exclude and --include
options directly in $Conf{RsyncArgs} (note: you will need several, and
the order is very important), rather than via $Conf{BackupFilesOnly} and
$Conf{BackupFilesExclude}.

I probably won't get this right, since the rsync exclude and include
options are tricky.  Assuming you point rsync at 'documents and settings',
then you want to include '/*/my documents' and exclude everything else.

    --include /*/my documents/
    --exclude /*/*/

This would still include all files in 'documents and settings'.
This might work better (but might not work at all):

    --include /*/my documents/
    --exclude /*/*/
    --include /*/
    --exclude /*

Craig