Can't Exclude Folders

[jim144]

I exclude a file (by name, or color, or by path) from a backup, but it gets backed up anyway. Sometimes only the "excluded" folder gets backed up. Can anyone tell ne why things are not working?

 

Thanks. JIM

 

[Retrospect version 6.0.204; Mac OS 10.3.9; 750MB RAM; backing up 60G from internal 8OG via Firewire to OWC HD 250G.]

[natew]

Hi

 

Did you exclude "folder" or "enclosing folder"? If you want to exclude the folder and all subdirectories you need to select "enclosing folder".

 

Nate

[jim144]

I did use "enclosing folder" to avoid backing up mu Pictures folder. For insurance I also added Boolean OR with path, and with label color. It still isn't excluded.

 

JIM

[CallMeDave]

Quote:

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For insurance I also added...

 

---

 

Once you start making more complex stings, the chances of doing something that will give you undesired results rises.

 

Use the "Check Selector" menu item to fine tune your structure. And for others to offer opinions, you're going to have to post your complete selector text exactly.

 

Dave

[jim144]

Here are two selectors thast don't work. JIM

The instructions below do not prevent the Pictures, Music, or Movies folders from being backed up:

 

Include files matching

selector All Files

or…

but always exclude files matching

name exactly matches Pictures

or matching

name exactly matches Music

or matching

name exactly matches Movies

 

 

Nor does this below exclude Pictures:

 

Include everything

 

but always exclude files matching

name exactly matches Pictures

[CallMeDave]

Quote:

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Here are two selectors thast don't work

 

---

 

Are you sure? They probably work just as written.

 

However, what's written is not going to exclude /Users/your_username/Pictures/

from being copied. Same goes for ~/Music or ~/Movies.

 

It's interesting that you answered Nate's query about "enclosing folder" in the affirmative, but there's no indication of that in your examples above.

 

I'll leave it for others to suggest working strings (I'm out of time). Likely, using "enclosing folder" in your Selector, either by name or by path, will be successful.

 

David

[pvision]

When you select "Enclosing Folder" it displays as Folder in the Selector window but the icon changes

[SimonHobson]

Yep, another missing feature - allow wildcards in selectors. Not being able to exclude (eg) "/Users/*/Library/Cache" is not good enough. I've been doing some selectors on my home network and used a full specific path, but that wouldn't work in the general case or on a large network - some of the selectors required without wildcards are not selective enough to be sure of not matching something you DO want backed up.

[jonathan7777]

I'd like to be able to exclude my user's Apple Mail IMAP folders since these are just local cached data with the actual files stored on our mail server and backed up seperately but I can't figure out how to do this. I don't want to exclude the entire Mail folder because some users have local mail stored there.

 

The path is:

 

~/library/Mail/IMAP-username@emailaddress.org@mailserver

 

We're running Retropsect 6.1 backup server.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.