Question 1

Richard's suggestion for excludes did not work for me: backuppc was not excluding my files. Dieter's suggestion for excludes is working for me. I'm getting excludes and includes and not getting a bunch of empty folders in the backup. My host config looks like this:

$Conf{BackupFilesExclude} = { '*' =>[ '**/Thecus Audio', '**/incremental-backup', '**/Wordpress_Backup', '**/NAS_Module_Source_', '**/FM_and_Computer_Backups', '**/USBCopy', '**/_Module_Folder_', '**/eSATAHDD', '**/USBHDD', '**/NAS_Public', '**/Time%20Machine', '**/_NAS_Picture', '**/iTunes_music' ]};

However, based on googling rsync discussions, I'm betting that it will work without the ** in front of the / For example, from the web:

A user running rsync had his entire source directory in an exclude.txt file:

rsync -Paz --exclude-from 'rsync-exclude.txt' /home/chris/ [email protected]:LinuxHome

where rsync-exclude.txt has this content:

/home/chris/Downloads/*
/home/chris/Downloads/
/home/chris/Downloads/*.*

The response was:

Answer

The problem is that you are specifying complete directory paths.

With rsync, all exclude (or include) paths beginning with / are are anchored to the root of transfer. The root of transfer in this case is /home/chris.

But since you're just trying to sync your home directory, and there is no subDdirectory of /home/chris named home/chris/Downloads, it ignores your exclusion.

Try removing the /home/chris parts from your rsync-exclude.txt file.

Question 2

The problem is that you are specifying complete directory paths.

With rsync, all exclude (or include) paths beginning with / are are anchored to the root of transfer. The root of transfer in this case is /home/chris.

But since you're just trying to sync your home directory, and there is no subDdirectory of /home/chris named home/chris/Downloads, it ignores your exclusion.

Try removing the /home/chris parts from your rsync-exclude.txt file.

[BackupPC-users] Debugging Excludes