Unable to exclude .cache from duplicity backup

Question

I wish to backup with duplicity (I use it often, usually without issues) /etc and /root. I wish to exclude .cache from the /root directory. I try:

duplicity incremental --full-if-older-than 30W --include /etc \
  --include /root --exclude '/root/.cache' --exclude / \
  --verbosity info / scp://TARGET

This generally works, but /root/.cache is included within backup. Instead of the '/root/.cache' I tried different expression patterns: /root/.cache, "/root/.cache", "**.cache", '**.cache', ''**.cache'' and several others, with same result.

According to duplicity manual (I have 0.7.12 on openSUSE), expression "**.cache" should work well. Do I misread the manual or do I do something wrong?

Answer 1

Tilia,

order matters when excluding in duplicity. the parameters are used in the order given. in your example '/root/.cache' is compared to

--include /etc
--include /root <-- and matches here
--exclude '/root/.cache'
--exclude /

try to move the specific exclusion in front of the more general include eg.

--include /etc
--exclude /root/.cache
--include /root
--exclude /**

that should work. moving the cache out the root's home folder would work as well of course.

btw. file selection has it's own section in the duplicity man page http://duplicity.nongnu.org/duplicity.1.html#sect9

wrt. to **.cache, yes. it will work, but will exclude any path named '.cache' in the end. if you want the exact name you should use **/.cache.

finally, there is the --exclude-if-present parameter, which can be quite handy if there are just some folders to be excluded.

--exclude-if-present filename
Exclude directories if filename is present. Allows the user to specify folders that they do not wish to backup by adding a specified file (e.g. ".nobackup") instead of maintaining a comprehensive exclude/include list. This option needs to come before any other include or exclude options.

..ede/duply.net