BTRFS send: exclude directories

BTRFS send: exclude directories

[GEO]

Hi,

I have been experimenting with btrfs send/receive for incremental backups, but 
could not figure out how to exclude certain directories from 
subvolumes/snapshots. For example, I want to backup my data in home, but I am 
not interested in backing up hidden directories like .cache too. 
Is it currently possible to achieve something like that?

Thanks for the great work!

Re: BTRFS send: exclude directories

[WorMzy Tykashi]

On 16 February 2014 20:07, GEO <1g2e3o4@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have been experimenting with btrfs send/receive for incremental backups, but
> could not figure out how to exclude certain directories from
> subvolumes/snapshots. For example, I want to backup my data in home, but I am
> not interested in backing up hidden directories like .cache too.
> Is it currently possible to achieve something like that?
>
> Thanks for the great work!
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-btrfs" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html

Hi,

You could create a read-write snapshot, remove the directories that
you're not interested in, then create a read-only snapshot of that to
send, then remove the read-write snapshot.

Note that I've not tested this myself, so I can't guarantee that it
will work. (It makes sense in my head though!)

Cheers,


WorMzy

(apologies if you receive this twice, I just noticed that gmail
doesn't reply to this mailing list, it replies to the person directly)

Re: BTRFS send: exclude directories

[Jim Salter]

Simplest way to do it is to make the directories that you don't want to 
replicate be separate subvolumes. I do this to keep from replicating 
copies of snapshot directories.

Example:

mv /home/GEO/.cache /home/GEO/.cache.tmp
btrfs sub create /home/GEO/.cache
cp -a --reflink=always /home/GEO/.cache.tmp/ /home/GEO/.cache/
cp -a --reflink=always /home/GEO/.cache.tmp/.* /home/GEO/.cache/
rm -rf /home/GEO/.cache.tmp

You could also just mv the files instead of first doing cp and then 
rm'ing them, but if you have many gigs of files, the cp --reflink=always 
will be a win - currently (at least, last I checked) mv across 
subvolumes would actually do a full copy, whereas a cp --reflink=always 
will just create new pointers to the blocks in the appropriate place 
(thereby completing instantaneously).

Anyway, once .cache (or whatever) is a subvolume instead of a directory, 
it will no longer get replicated with your btrfs send command of its 
parent directory.

On 02/16/2014 03:07 PM, GEO wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have been experimenting with btrfs send/receive for incremental backups, but
> could not figure out how to exclude certain directories from
> subvolumes/snapshots. For example, I want to backup my data in home, but I am
> not interested in backing up hidden directories like .cache too.
> Is it currently possible to achieve something like that?
>
> Thanks for the great work!
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-btrfs" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html