Preview function not working for backups?

[Lawrence Paulson]

I am trying to test a new rule. Using the Backup Wizard, I found that no files were selected and indeed discovered an error in the rule that could have caused this. However, every other attempt to test the rule seems to show that all files are selected. I decided to run a test backup, deliberately changing the files that I wanted to be excluded, and the backup log showed no discrepancies for them, suggesting that they were indeed excluded. So I'm not convinced that the backup preview function is reliable.

 

All I am trying to do, incidentally, is to define a rule that excludes the standard caches and trash files under Mac OS X. Such a rule is supposedly provided, but I'm not convinced that it works. The documentation of rules in the manual is extremely sketchy and does not explain, for example, what "/Library/Caches/" means as a Mac path as opposed to a UNIX path. At the very least, can we have more thorough documentation please?

[Maser]

"Mac Path" -- means using the Mac Client (yes, OSX is "unix", but not in this instance.)

 

 

"Unix Path" would be used if you were actually backing up a Linux box.

 

And, yes, there are documented bugs in using the "Preview" of rules -- the only way to fully verify rules is to do a test backup of something.

 

That said -- I use the built-in "All Files Except Cache Files" rule as a starting point for my custom rules and it works fine for me.

[Lawrence Paulson]

Thank you, that's helpful. Another quick question, if I may:

 

If I replace "/Library/Caches/" by "Library/Caches", will it now also match /User//Library/Caches/? I assume that the original version only matches the global library.