[Box Backup] Re: Bug#435860: boxbackup-client: AlwaysInclude[File|Dir] is not working as expected

[Chris Wilson]

Hi Andreas,

On Sun, 5 Aug 2007, Andreas Putzo wrote:

> Ah ok. I assumed something like this. Perhaps the comments in the 
> generated bbackupd.conf should be improved then to be more clear on 
> this. It can be terrible if one learns the hard way, that the backup 
> system is not backing up all the files you was thinking it would. :)

Yes, but that can happen to any backup system, that's why test restores 
are important (nothing else will really reassure you).

>> At the moment, the workarounds are to either (1) create a new location, or
>> (2) exclude all files and directories under the excluded directory, except
>> the ones on the path to the AlwaysIncluded directory, like so:
>
> I have several directives like this in my config. Since they are all
> subdirectories of 'home' i don't want to create different locations
> for each of them.

Why not?

> Using (2)  would render the config file more complicated and 
> error-prone.

Indeed.

> If the include/exclude logic can be improved to be aware of 
> AlwaysIncluded subdirectories i would appreciate this.

I wish it were so simple, but because AlwaysInclude*Regex can apply at any 
point in the tree, it would mean that we always have to scan all the way 
down the tree. So we'd need another directive like SkipDir(sRegex) to 
completely exclude descending into a directory and any possibility of 
files inside it being backed up.

Cheers, Chris.
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