Topic: flexbackup ignoring $exclude_expr

[Geoff]

I'm having trouble with flexbackup on 5.5... I have a 4GB (native) travan tape installed which is working fine. I've tried a couple of backups which are all ok. However, I've added a couple of large ibays which I don't want backed up every time, so I've added a couple of $exclude_expr to the /etc/e-smith/templates/etc/flexbackup.conf/10Exclude_expr00 file and done an expand-template. The new flexbackup.conf gets written ok, and includes my excludes... but the tape backup always fails at 4GB.

If I delete the ibays and backup, everything's fine... The two large ibays are called "opktools" (experimenting with getting XP OEM pre-installs hosted on e-smith) and sp-cdrom (a whole bunch of driver files and software etc). I've added these two excludes:

$exclude_expr[3] = '/opktools/';
$exclude_expr[4] = '/sp-cdrom/';

but still no joy.

Anyone have any clues?

Many thanks,
Geoff

[brian read]

As per:

http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=12100.msg45422#msg45422

You need to change the $type = 'dump' to $type = 'tar'

I think it must be because "dump" does not accept a file list, whereas "tar" does.

I'm not sure whether this means the Server-manager restore will work though, or whether you'll need to restore it manually.

cheers

Brian

[jasper]

You probably need to change:

$exclude_expr[3] = '/opktools/';
$exclude_expr[4] = '/sp-cdrom/';

to

$exclude_expr[3] = 'opktools';
$exclude_expr[4] = 'sp-cdrom';

it's documented in /etc/e-smith/templates/etc/flexbackup.conf/10Exclude_expr00

[Geoff]

Thanks Jasper - those expressions work as they are (with the slashes) if using tar - Brian was right, using flexbackup with dump does not support exclude_expr. Dump does however support the exclusion of inodes, so you can do a 'stat' of the ibay you wish to exclude and do 'dump -e 123456'. Not particularly sexy though, and I guess of you do a restore, the inodes will be different on a new drive.

Any ideas if mitel is going to switch to 'tar' or another format for its flexbackups? I'm sure I'm not the only one wishing to exclude certain folders from backups.

Cheers,
Geoff

[jasper]

Don't know what Mitel's plans are. I am using an OnStream DI-30 with flexbackup but with the afio rpm installed and flexbackup configured to use it after reading

http://www.jpsdomain.org/linux/#backups

Got the rpm from rpmfind and it appears to work fine, exclusions, list files on tape, etc. Haven't tested a full restore,  just extracted all the files to a different location to check contents.

Cheers

jasper