Re: [BackupPC-users] Wildcards on paths & filenames

[Peter <pet...@us...>]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the detailed response.

Hmm, sounds like a serious design question and one I may help to
influence (well a little at least).

Firstly, I turned to BackupPC as I like that they do not backup
duplicate files and simple changes to configuration doesn't cause a
massive revisit to backing everything again (something that Bacula
does). Plus, I thought the interface look very user friendly. So, I have
liked all that I have seen and think it works quite nicely.

As you mentioned, you are needing to have BackupPC to be able to deal
with many different protocols (I guess you mean connecting to systems).
My original thought when I configured the system and this support
request email was that if I entered *.tmp then I am looking to
exclude/include that file from every directory (the whole share). But
after reading your email, I think it could be just the root level. Or to
be more explicit for root level you would enter "/*.tmp", if you wanted
the whole share (ie every directory and sub-directory) then enter
"*/*.tmp". This would allow to match 0 or more characters, including
paths, prior to the file in question. So, in my original email example,
I have a directory, "Do not archive", which normally appears as
"/Data/Do not archive" but can as easily appear as "/Data/Peter/Docs/do
not archive". I could therefore, enter the exclusion as "*/do not
archive".

This would also help with Windows "My Documents" folder which appears
for each user on Windows (well XP at least), as "/Documents and
Settings/Peter/My Documents", therefore, you would configure as
"/Documents and Settings/*/My Documents"

One question, what happens in the situation where a folder name is the
same as file name, eg I have a folder "Do not archive", but also a file
"Do not archive" without any extension? So, having the syntax of "*/Do
not archive" will get which? Especially when I want to include the file
in the backup but exclude the folder from backup.

I hope this answers your question. Let me know if you need more details.
If you feel it is reaching off topic to the mailing list, then feel free
to email me directly.

Ah, this time I remembered to check who the TO was going to :)

Regards
Peter

PS Thanks for the link to your site. I keep talking about finding out
about IRC and your blog has helped to reinforce that thought.


----- Original message -----
From: "Paul Mantz" <pc...@zm...>
To: pet...@us...
Cc: "BackupPC User List" <bac...@li...>
Date: Thu, 1 May 2008 15:57:57 -0700
Subject: Re: [BackupPC-users] Wildcards on paths & filenames

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Hi!
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The problem with file inclusions and exclusions is that they are not
uniform at the moment.  Different protocols have different syntaxes
and implementations of file inclusion/exclusion.  At the moment, there
is no support for wildcards, since globbing in Perl (the syntax for
UNIX path specification) interfaces directly with the file system.
However, we are working to make a uniform schema for directory
specification that will work for as many protocols as possible, with
the inclusion of some more fluid syntax.  Implementing wildcards is a
tricky thing, since we assume that the root is the sharename, and
saying '*.tmp'  would be ambiguous as far as depth is concerned.
Would you just want to delete any file matching that pattern on the
root level, or for the whole share?  We are still working on this.

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