ghoff Posted February 25, 2012 Report Share Posted February 25, 2012 Anyone know what the "Backup Exclude List" contains? I am writing rules for Retrospect 9 and want to exclude things like logs, caches, and assorted other system and application files that are not needed for the restore of a working system. But I would rather not duplicate files Retrospect already excludes. The only hint of the backup exculde list is this quote from the Retrospect 9 for Mac Release Notes: RET-6081: Add Mac OS X Lion's "Saved Application State" folders to the backup exclude list I have tried searching all the obvious sources with no success, but I am sure I have not tried all possible combinations of description. I hope someone already has a clue. Glenn Retrospect 9 Trial Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prl Posted February 26, 2012 Report Share Posted February 26, 2012 Anyone know what the "Backup Exclude List" contains? I am writing rules for Retrospect 9 and want to exclude things like logs, caches, and assorted other system and application files that are not needed for the restore of a working system. But I would rather not duplicate files Retrospect already excludes. The only hint of the backup exculde list is this quote from the Retrospect 9 for Mac Release Notes: RET-6081: Add Mac OS X Lion's "Saved Application State" folders to the backup exclude list I have tried searching all the obvious sources with no success, but I am sure I have not tried all possible combinations of description. I hope someone already has a clue. Glenn Retrospect 9 Trial Preferences>Rules. You can duplicate ("+" icon) a rule, and then modify its contents ("pencil" icon). That should be close to what you need. You can also examine an existing rule in the rule editor. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ghoff Posted February 26, 2012 Author Report Share Posted February 26, 2012 Preferences>Rules. You can duplicate ("+" icon) a rule, and then modify its contents ("pencil" icon). That should be close to what you need. You can also examine an existing rule in the rule editor. Thanks for the reminder - I had not looked at the rules that came with Retrosepect 9 for a while. But, these packaged rules are not what I am looking for. Based on my observations, Retrospect has an internal list of files it excludes from all backups, regardless of any rules applied to the backup by the script. As an example, nowhere in the rules is there found the above mentioned exclusion for Lion's "Saved Application State" folders. Apparent internal exclusions - observed for the root folder of a Snow Leopard volume: .Spotlight-V100 .fseventsd .hotfiles.btree dev home net Volumes - content excluded private/tmp - content excluded So, I am looking for the "complete" list of exclusions built into Retrospect 9. This would include those new for Lion, and also for Leopard, Tiger, UNIX, Windows. Glenn Retrospect 9 Trial Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prl Posted February 27, 2012 Report Share Posted February 27, 2012 ... dev home net Volumes - content excluded ... I wouldn't expect that any of those folders would be backed up. /dev is created at boot time by the kernel (it's a devfs file system, not a HDD-based file system) and neither needs to be nor should be backed up. /home and /net are where auto-mounts occur, and likewise they are constructed file systems containing automount mount points (file system type autofs). Retrospect has a separate mechanism for backing up both local and remote volumes, so I'm not surprised that Volumes isn't backed up. It could be that all of them are excluded by a "don't cross mount points" rule. You can examine the file system mount table by running the "mount" command in Terminal. As for why the others aren't backed up, I don't know, and I don't know where you'd find the authoritative list. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ghoff Posted March 6, 2012 Author Report Share Posted March 6, 2012 As for why the others aren't backed up, I don't know, and I don't know where you'd find the authoritative list. Guess I was hoping Retrospect, Inc. might take a hint and provide the authoritative list. Thanks for your insights on the list that includes dev, home, net and Volumes. I am assuming a similar line of reasoning might apply to the other files in the list: i. e., these folders and files are created and maintained by the "system" and should not be simply overwritten by a restore from backups. I have found one more folder that Retrospect 9 is not backing up: private/var/vm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prl Posted March 7, 2012 Report Share Posted March 7, 2012 ... I am assuming a similar line of reasoning might apply to the other files in the list: i. e., these folders and files are created and maintained by the "system" and should not be simply overwritten by a restore from backups. I have found one more folder that Retrospect 9 is not backing up: private/var/vm That one is certainly a case of "system folder that makes no sense to back up": Cambyses:getWizPnP prl$ ls -l /private/var/vm total 8912896 -rw------T 1 root wheel 4294967296 Mar 7 14:09 sleepimage -rw------- 1 root wheel 67108864 Mar 7 12:25 swapfile0 -rw------- 1 root wheel 67108864 Mar 7 14:10 swapfile1 -rw------- 1 root wheel 134217728 Mar 7 12:50 swapfile2 Cambyses:getWizPnP prl$ It's where the system paging files and the system image for waking up from sleep are stored. Not much point in backing them up. They're big, always changing and of little conceivable use in a restore. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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