Air Cleaner User Manual

Chapter 9. Exclude Lists

You might want to exclude certain files, directories, filesystems or logical volumes

from a backup to reduce the time needed to make the backup and the amount of

space on the backup media. If, for instance, you have a directory that contains only

temporary files that are recreated each time an application is started, those files

might be excluded from the backup to save time and space. Another example

might be read-only data files used by an application that never change. In the case

of a system failure, it might be easier to reinstall those data files from another

more stationary backup than to include the data on a daily backup.

You can exclude a single file, a directory (and all files beneath that directory), a

filesystem, or a logical volume from all SysBack backups.

Note: If a directory name is excluded, all files below that directory are also

excluded. This includes any files that might be required for the system to

operate properly and might parse into different filesystems. Use discretion

when excluding directories to prevent creating a system backup that cannot

be used as system installation media.

You cannot use the following characters in the exclude list because they have

special meaning to some AIX commands:

Although some of these characters can be used in a file or directory name in AIX,

those files or directories cannot be properly excluded when entered in the exclude

list. Only the asterisk (*) character can be used in the exclude list, but this character

represents a wildcard, allowing groups of files or directories with similar names to

be excluded.

The following are examples of using wild cards in the exclude list:

/*test* All files in the system containing the word “test”.

/*old All files on the system ending with “old”.

/home/b* All files under /home starting with a “b”.

/home/t*y All files under /home starting with “t” and ending with “y”.

Note that any entry starting with “/*” includes all directories on the system, not

just the root (/) directory.

To access the SysBack menus for managing the exclude lists:

1. At a command line, type smit.

2. Select IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for System Backup and Recovery.

3. Select Configuration Options.

4. Select Exclude Lists.