Re: I'm doing something wrong with excluding files.

Louis Erickson <[email protected]> wrote:

>
> I'm using star to run a very simple backup of a server here.  My goal is 
> simply to run a tar of the whole file system to another volume.  In doing 
> so, I'm excluding certain directories from the tar file, as they're either 
> meaningless to back up (/proc, for instance) or handled via another 
> mechanism (such as databases).

If you include /proc, then you did not read the star man page....


> (As a note, I'm using star because GNU's tar was completely unable to 
> handle multi-volume backups on another machine I'm responsible for.  
> Well, it claims it backed up okay, but it wouldn't restore.  Since it left 
> me high and dry once, I won't be using it for backups again.)

I known problem: GNU tar has a 5% chance that a multi-volume continuation
archive will not be accepted. 


> The server in question is Linux, running the ext3 file system.
>
> The problem I'm seeing is that, while I specify files to exclude, the 
> exclusions aren't working.  I'm probably doing something foolish wrong, 
> and I can't see what it is.
>
> When I try to fiddle with exclusions on the command line, they work 
> properly.  It's only when I'm using it in the cron job that they don't 
> seem to be right.
>
> Here's the command line I'm giving:
>
> /usr/bin/nice /usr/bin/star -c -.. -acl -atime -link-dirs -numeric
> -p -xattr -xdir -multivol -H=exustar -fifo -fs=32m -fifostats -z \
> f=/mnt/sda1/full.tar.gz new-volume-script=/bin/true \
> -not pattern=/proc/* -not pattern=/tmp/* -not pattern=/media/* \
> -not pattern=/mnt/* -not pattern=/var/tmp/* -not pattern=/var/run/* \
> -not pattern=/var/spool/news/* -not pattern=/opt/interbase/data/* \
> -not pattern=/dev/log /

A good start is to read the section "INCREMENTAL BACKUPS" from the star
man page.

Jörg

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