backup

[Gary_167]

Hello, is it possible to exclude a .dir and contents from VMS BACKUP?

[Ian Miller. · Accepted solution]

if its not a image backup then

/EXCLUDE=[FOO.BAR]

will exclude all files in the directory [FOO.BAR]

[Gary_167]

This is an image backup, what are the choices at this point?

[Martin P.J. Zinser]

Hi,

set file/nobackup before executing the
image backup. Restore the previous settings
after the image backup is finished.

Greetings, Martin

[Ian Miller.]

image backups ignore /EXCLUDE

you can prevent the contents of a file being backed up by setting the file /NOBACKUP.
This causes only the file header to be backed up. This is what is done for pagefiles for example.

Why are you wishing to exclude the contents of this dir?

[Gary_167]

there are folders that contain data that shouldn't be on tape. I take it back about the image backup, the actual command only uses BACKUP. The files get FTP-ed to the folder daily. My main focus is to keep them off tape, it would be nice if i could do this on the folder level and not have to specify the file type by which to exclude. Thanks for the advice.

[Gary_167]

Ian, i found this in the VMS manual, it makes it sound like the files within the dir will be backed up.

"
/EXCLUDE

If you specify directory files (files with the file type .DIR), your command is processed but the directory files are not excluded (they are processed). BACKUP uses directory files to facilitate incremental restore operations. "

[Ian Miller.]

if you do /EXCLUDE=[FOO.BAR...]
then any file in directory BAR or below won't be included. If you did /EXCLUDE=[FOO]BAR.DIR then BACKUP will basically ignore you as it has to backup BAR.DIR so that files in the directory can be backed up.

[Himanshu_3]

VMS file names have structure, i.e., consist of three parts. You have to exclude [directory]*.*;* to achieve what you want.

HELP for BACKUP /EXCLUDE says:

BACKUP

/EXCLUDE

/EXCLUDE=(file-spec[,...])

Input File-Selection Qualifier

Excludes files that otherwise meet the selection criteria for
a save or copy operation. If you specify more than one file,
separate the file specifications with commas and enclose the list
in parentheses.

Do not use a device specification when defining the files to be
excluded. You can use most standard wildcard characters, but you
cannot use wildcard characters denoting latest versions of files
(;) or relative versions of files (;-n).

If you specify directory files (files with the file type .DIR),
your command is processed but the directory files are not
excluded (they are processed).

You cannot use the /EXCLUDE qualifier in image restore
operations.

I have taken an approach where the command goes something like

$ BACKUP ddcu:[sys%...]*.*;*/exclude=[sys%.syscommon...]*.*;* -
svset.sav/save

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

Anyone,

Why is /exclude not implemented for image backups ?

If I have a disk with some kind of /tmp on it that I want to exclude, it seems strange that this is imposible.

Wim

[Ian Miller.]

/IMAGE is a request to make a logical image of the file system - it does not make sense to exclude things. Backing up all files on the disk is different [000000...]*.*.
You don't save the home block and boot block info except with a inage backup.

[Uwe Zessin]

/IMAGE also retains all file_ids (idx,seq,rvn) - to be able to keep directory aliases. If /EXCLUDE worked with /IMAGE you were able to skip primary entries. That could leave your disk with dangeling (secondary) directory entries.