On Sat, Jan 14, 2006 at 03:04:26PM -0500, Jon LaBadie wrote:
> > In the above case the DLE in question was the root-directory.  In
> > filesystem semantics "/media" and "./media" is aequivalent as long as
> > you are cd'd into / (as it was in this case).
> 
> Not that it explains any of Josef's problems, but I think some are
> confusing the contents of an exclude list file (the things being excluded)
> and the specified name of the exclude list file.

I am using amanda for almost 15 years now (IIRC), and I have fallen into
this trap several times.

> The contents of the file must always be specified as relative to the
> head directory of the DLE.

This sentence should find its way into the man page to clarify this topic.

> The name of the list file can be specified absolute (full) or relative.
> If relative it is relative to the head directory of the DLE.  If absolute,
> it is based on the client's root directory.

OK, this is already in the man-page.

> Thus you could have a global exclude list file affecting all DLE's on
> the client plus DLE specific exclude lists.

Beware of a trap here:  For example assume you want to exclude /bin because
you can always re-install it from your distribution CD/DVD.  And then you
set /usr/local on a separate DLE.  Now your /usr/local/bin will be excluded,
too.

Therefore, with the current implementation of the exclude mechanism, I
would strongly recommend a separate exclude file for every DLE.

I think a better way to handle exclusions would be to do something like

  # in a real implementation this should be a string-match instead of
  # a regex, but you get the idea...
  #
  perl -pe 's!^$DLEpath/!./!g'

when creating the exclude file.  With this, relative and absolute paths
would be possible and you could create a global exclude file without the
risk to fall into the trap mentioned above.