How to exclude files from a backup?

snm · October 13, 2020, 12:23pm

I installed YunoHost a few days ago and so far I’m impressed how well everything works and how easy it is to install and use the apps.

Now I wanted to backup everything except the videos recorded by TVHeadend but couldn’t find a way to do it with the backup system of YunoHost.

Unfortunately when I just backup everything those videos are even included twice in the backup (once as user data and once in the TVHeadend backup).

How can I exclude these videos (in /home/hts/*.ts) from the backup?

ljf · October 13, 2020, 2:02pm

In theory, you should do it by cli with:

BACKUP_CORE_ONLY=1 yunohost backup create --apps tvheadend

But there is an issue on the backup script of tvheadend, and this features is not enabled for this app.

github.com

YunoHost-Apps/tvheadend_ynh/blob/master/scripts/backup#L48


ynh_script_progression --message="Stopping $app service..." --weight=1

ynh_systemd_action --service_name=$app --action="stop" --log_path="/var/log/$app.log"

#=================================================
# BACKUP THE APP MAIN DIR AND CONFIG FILES
#=================================================
ynh_script_progression --message="Backing up $app main directory and config files..." --weight=4

ynh_backup --src_path="/etc/default/tvheadend"
ynh_backup --src_path="$final_path"

#=================================================
# BACKUP THE NGINX CONFIGURATION
#=================================================
ynh_script_progression --message="Backing up nginx web server configuration..." --weight=1

ynh_backup --src_path="/etc/nginx/conf.d/$domain.d/$app.conf"

#=================================================
# SPECIFIC BACKUP

--is_big option is missing, but it seems /home/hts/ mix config data and video data. (I don’t know very well tvheadend)

snm · October 14, 2020, 12:14pm

Thank you for the detailed answer about Tvheadend.

Since the “official” way to exclude data with the --is_big option is missing for Tvheadend, I tried something else and it seems to work well:

I created a new directory /home/hts-videos with the same group and owner as /home/hts,
removed the videos from home/hts,
adjusted the Tvheadend configuration so that recordings are saved in the new folder from now on,
and added an empty file .nobackup to the new folder to exclude it from the backup

This way even full backups via the GUI don’t include the videos anymore.