Collection of useful rules

[sussox]

Hi!

 

I thought we could try to collect examples of useful rules for different scenarios in a single thread.

 

I start with a question. What would be a good ruleset for OS X Clients? (home folder being backed up) If i only want work-files and preferences.

 

What about the rules below? (Mail is being backed up on the server) What more to exclude that is a potential space-stealer?

Edited March 25, 2010 by Guest

[Maser]

For what I do here (backing up the "Users" folder only on my clients), my OSX client rule is written so that it:

 

1) includes:

 

Saved rule includes All Files Except Cache Files

 

2) then excludes (which may help you and YMMV):

 

Folder Name is .Trash

 

Folder Name contains .iDisk.sparsebundle (we don't need to backup people's iDisks...)

 

Folder Name is iTunes Music (this is based on

policy here)

 

Folder Name contains .vmwarevm (we don't back up VM ware images)

 

File Name is .DS_Store

 

Folder Mac Path contains iphone software updates

 

Folder Mac Path contains PubSub (lots of crap here)

 

Folder name ends with .caldav (as we run an iCal *server*, these are just local copies of what is on the server)

 

Folder name ends with .exchange (for Mac Exchange iCal users)

 

Folder Name is Fonts Disabled

 

Folder Mac Path contains /Google/Picasa3/db3

 

 

And then for specific users we don't back up "pictures" and "movies" and tell them to back up their own private stuff at home.

 

 

I have a couple of other things I don't back up here, but these would probably be unique to our retention rules.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[pjonesvcc]

We have a MS Exchange mail server and use MS Entourage as the mail client. The mail is stored server-side, and synced locally. The Entourage database file often approaches 1 GB for many of our users and changes constantly. I exclude this file and instruct every new user to refrain from making folders in the "On My Computer" section of Entourage - and then use the disclosure triangle to hide it from view.

 

 

Hold option while adding an exclude rule to add a nested set of rules:

 

All of the following are true:

 

. "File" "Mac Path" "contains" "/Microsoft User Data/"

. "File" "Mac Path" "contains" "Identit"

. "File" "Name" "is" "Database"

 

That seems to catch the database file on all my users: Entourage 2004 and 2008, no matter if their main identity has been rebuilt under a different name or not (default is Main Identity).

 

If there is an easier way to do this, I'm open to suggestions. (I'm thinking wildcards, maybe...?) The default path of the database is "/Users//Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office 200x Identities//Database"

[Maser]

I was recently told the "is like" identifier should work with wildcards.

 

I've been meaning to try this, but haven't got around to it.

 

So something like:

 

Folder Mac Path "is like" /users/*/Documents/Microsoft User Data/

 

Is *supposed* to work now...

 

 

Now, whether two "*" in the path would also work is a good question...

[pjonesvcc]

I saw that "is like" option, but was too nervous to try it. Without any documentation, it's anyone's guess how that works, right?

 

Did the person that told you this have a link to any docs, by any chance? =)

[rhwalker]

I saw that "is like" option, but was too nervous to try it. Without any documentation, it's anyone's guess how that works, right?

 

Did the person that told you this have a link to any docs, by any chance? =)

There is a User Manual now. Here is the link:

Retrospect 8 Users Guide

 

Russ

[pjonesvcc]

That's true. And, helpful in many ways. But, it also doesn't describe the "is like" option in any way.

[rhwalker]

Well, I'll admit that page 210 of the Retrospect 8 Users Guide is, shall we say, a bit content free.

 

You might want to look at the Retrospect 6.5 for Windows Users Guide, which has a good discussion of wildcard use (? and *), and also the Selectors section of the Retrospect 7 for Windows Users Guide, which is pretty good. Translation to Mac is required, but it's not that bad.

 

Note also the historical oddities in the Retrospect 7 for Windows Users Guide, which states to use ":" (the Mac OS Classic path delimiter) as the Mac path delimiter, and which indicates that path names MUST start with the Volume name. The code base for Retrospect 8 started from Retrospect Windows, so there may be some issues because of that history.

 

I've given up on testing Retrospect 8 until the "big bugfix release" comes later this quarter century, but you might want to try some experiments based on the Retrospect Windows documentation.

 

Experimentation would be easier if Preview worked in Retrospect 8.

 

Russ

[Maser]

Experimentation would be easier if Preview worked in Retrospect 8.

 

Russ

 

 

 

Double-agree.

 

To me (as I don't care about reading Retrospect 6 files at this point ), this is the single thing I miss most from Retrospect 6 -- an *easy and quick* way to test Rules.

 

 

[sussox]

I tried to include "All Files Except Cache Files" on a client but then no files at all was copied despite there was a long time ago it was backed up. When re-running the backup without the rule included, 2.1GB was copied, lots of documents that aren't near the Cache-directories, why?

[Maser]

Can you post a screen-shot of your rule that was doing this?

 

You have to be *explicitly correct* when you type the name of another rule to include (capitalization/spelling counts!)

 

I'm attaching a partial screen shot of how I set up the rule I've been using since 8.0 that includes the "all files..." rule and excludes other stuff.

[Maser]

And, as Russ pointed out earlier, my exclude rules work with lower-case as I have my drives formatted accordingly.

 

(Russ made an excellent point in a different thread, though, and I should correct this eventually...)

[sussox]

The rule and the included rule in the screeshots.

[sussox]

Heh, now that i looked at the screenshot i maybe found the problem.

 

This don't look right?

[Maser]

No that doesn't -- but I've never tried "file name contains <>" to see what it did.

 

That would be a good bug to file with EMC if that's the issue.

 

[sussox]

Gonna try and run a backup without that line and see what i get..

[sussox]

Ok, i can now confirm that the backup ran normally without the line above. SO, an empty rule Excludes ALL files. Interesting. How do i report this bug?

[Maser]

Ok, i can now confirm that the backup ran normally without the line above. SO, an empty rule Excludes ALL files. Interesting. How do i report this bug?

 

 

Open a new thread in the "Bug Reporting" forum. Bugs discovered way down deep in other forums aren't always brought to EMC's attention...