Using INCLude/EXCLude Rules

Using INCLude/EXCLude Rules

Notice

For creating Include and Exclude rules the TSM/ISP documentation provides excessive examples. Therefore, only the most important statements and options are summarized:

NOTICE: These examples are for Unices, but the statements are somehow identical on Windows. (/ ⇒ \) The configuration therefore will be in “dsm.opt” instead of “dsm.sys”.

The configuration of Include, but especially EXCLUDE rules requires the highest attention as wrongly placed or wrong defined rules will lead to files excluded from backup! Subsequent changes may discard already existing backups!

The GWDG therefore can only give suggestions and recommendations for creating rules, but is not taking any responsibility for the correctness of examples!

Please verify your chosen rules before use, either by a backup with the option preview in the GUI or calling dsmc backup preview!

Using Wildcards and Special Chrarcters

TSM allows the usage of Wildcards in In- and Exclude rules:

? representing exactly one random character
* representing any number of random characters

/…/ representing any number of directory levels

/home/.../public

Representing all directories public within /home, independent of the directory level

/srv/.../*.zip

Is representing all .zip files within /srv.

Groups of characters can be summed as a regular expression : [<list of characters>]. You can use a dash to enter ranges. Example:
```
exclude /Volumes/Vol[1-4]/.../*.cpp
```
is selecting all files with the extension .cpp from the directories Vol1,Vol2, Vol3 and Vol4 within /Volumes.
```
exclude /home/[a-c,A-C]*/.../*.cpp
```
excludes all files from home directory starting with an a,b,c,A,B or C.

If a file or directory name includes special characters, they have to be masked

Usually whitespaces can be captured in quotation marks:
```
"My Files"
```
The special characters
```
 * ? : [ ]
```
have to be masked by a
```
 [\<Symbol]
```
. To exclude the file
```
Text[2].txt
```
following rule needs to be set:
```
exclude /.../Text[\[]2[\]]
```
.

To Exclude the directory

/usr/src/classes/project::tmp

following rule needs to be set:

exclude.dir  /usr/src/classes/project[\:][\:]tmp

Outsource Include/Exclude Rules

In- and exclude rules can get extensiv fast and therefore will substantially affect the configuration readability. In this state or if you want to group rules you may find it helpful to outsource these rules in another or multiple other files. These files can be imported into the “dsm.sys” using the parameter INCLExcl <Filename>. Example:

INCLExcl  inclexcl.user
INCLExcl  inclexcl.linux
INCLExcl  inclexcl.gwdg

Using INCLExcl to import a non existing file an error will occur. Please validate “dsm.sys” by testing.

Hierarchy of InExClude

Generally the TSM client works through the dsm.sys file last to first.
The rules which match first will be applied, rules matching later may won't affect (See Example1).

Example1:

include /Users/user01/Documents/includefile.cpp
exclude /Users/user01/Documents/.../*

⇒ The file includefile.cpp will not be backed up caused by the previous exclusion of the directory /Users/user01/Documents.

Example2:

exclude /Users/user01/Documents/.../*
include /Users/user01/Documents/includefile.cpp

⇒ The file includefile.cpp will be backed up, since it was explicitly included by using include before the exclusion of the entire directory /Users/user01/Documents.

Rules which exclude entire filespaces (exclude.fs) or directories (exclude.dir) will be applied before all other rules.
Rules in a separate file will be applied at that time where the INEXClude <file> is placed in the dsm.sys.

Management Classes

The Management Class on the TSM server, which should be used for the backup can be managed also by the include rules:

include <path or file | search pattern> <Management Class>

This feature applies only in individual cases at the backup service by GWDG. If so, we will contact you personally.

Compression

All data will be compressed due to sever side default settings which enable the data transfer compression. Compressed data (e.g. .zip,.gz as well as .jpg, etc.) will be tried to be compressed again. This will most likely result in a high computational load rather than result in data reduction.

To avoid this unnecessary load all compressed data should be excluded from compression. The relevant rules should be applied to the end of the file dsm.sys(Unices) or dsm.opt(Windows). (See Hierarchie above)

Suggestion for exclusion of compressed files:

exclude.compression     /.../*.z
exclude.compression     /.../*.Z
exclude.compression     /.../*.gz
exclude.compression     /.../*.GZ
exclude.compression     /.../*.bz
exclude.compression     /.../*.BZ
exclude.compression     /.../*.bz2
exclude.compression     /.../*.BZ2
exclude.compression     /.../*.tgz
exclude.compression     /.../*.TGZ
exclude.compression     /.../*.gif
exclude.compression     /.../*.GIF
exclude.compression     /.../*.jpg
exclude.compression     /.../*.JPG
exclude.compression     /.../*.mpg
exclude.compression     /.../*.MPG
exclude.compression     /.../*.mp4
exclude.compression     /.../*.MP4
exclude.compression     /.../*.wmv
exclude.compression     /.../*.WMV
exclude.compression     /.../*.mp3
exclude.compression     /.../*.MP3
exclude.compression     /.../*.aac
exclude.compression     /.../*.AAC
exclude.compression     /.../*.wma
exclude.compression     /.../*.WMA
exclude.compression     /.../*.zip
exclude.compression     /.../*.ZIP
exclude.compression     /.../*.rar
exclude.compression     /.../*.RAR
exclude.compression     /.../*.pdf
exclude.compression     /.../*.PDF
exclude.compression     /.../*.cdr
exclude.compression     /.../*.CDR
exclude.compression     /.../*.ppt
exclude.compression     /.../*.PPT
exclude.compression     /.../*.pst
exclude.compression     /.../*.PST
exclude.compression     /.../*.rpm
exclude.compression     /.../*.deb

Encryption

TSM supports file encryption before sending the data to a server. Beside the indisputable advantages the encryption comes with some disadvantages as well:

The encryption is preventing every access to the data. Even from the TSM administrator.
There is no way to decrypt the data if the password is lost!

Some disadvantages can be neglected:

The compression rate is usually low.
Functions as subfile backup or client side deduplictaion and server side deduplication can't be used with encryption – both are not offered by GWDG in context of the file back up anyway.

Encryption can be used by defining rules for the files which should be encrypted. Therefore, you have to use the keyword encrypt with an include statement, e.g.:

include.encrypt /home/.../*
exclude.encrypt /home/.../public/.../*

Excluding TSM files

Backing up the TSM directories is in general not very useful. Therefore, it could be excluded by exclude.dir rule. Somehow, if the configuration files should be backed up, two approaches are possible:

The files could be saved at a separate path and only have a symlink / shortcut in the TSM client directory. The TSM directory is excluded as mentioned above.
Using wildcards instead of exclude.dir to exclude the TSM directory. The explicit include for the TSM configuration files must then be set:

exclude /opt/tivoli/tsm/.../*
include /opt/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin/dsm.sys
include /opt/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin/dsm.opt
include /opt/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin/tsmjbbd.ini

Server Side Include-Exclude Rules

Server sided in- exclude rules are overriding the client side configuration. The GWDG largely dispenses server sided rules since only the administrator can usefully define the files to be excluded or encrypted.

At the present time (date of this text) only the management class 3COPIES is specified to back up the system state (Windows only) to limit the amount of system state versions by the number of three. Relevant only for Bare Metal restores, the system state uses an excessive amount of storage. The system restore points in Windows providing an easier way for restoring older system states on running systems.

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