Sensible default ignores

[xeruf]

Have you checked borgbackup docs, FAQ, and open Github issues?

Yes

Is this a BUG / ISSUE report or a QUESTION?

REQUEST

Describe the problem you're observing.

Can you reproduce the problem?

When I run borg on a new machine, I first have to copy over a set of ignores so the backup does not become a whole mess (it once pulled some infinite data stream from some /dev-descriptor into the repo...)

Suggestion

A set of default ignores that can easily be overriden, which ignore common system directories that should not be backed up, such as /dev and /tmp.

[ThomasWaldmann]

I don't think this should be implemented due to these reasons:

• borg's behaviour should not be magic (it should not ignore stuff or do stuff that is not obvious)
• what should be ignored and what not depends on the OS, potentially even on the specific system and on the use case (e.g. i like to bind mount / to /rootfs and then I backup this, including /rootfs/dev/)
• as seen in the previous item, the exclude paths might depend on the mountpoint and that is not necessarily /
• if we would build in a default exclude list, there would be also a need to make borg not use it. if you have magic, you also need anti-magic. in the end, it is easier to not have magic.

[xeruf]

Well, maybe this could be opt-in with a flag such as --ignore-system-files or whatever, which simply uses sensible heuristics.

[ThomasWaldmann]

Hmm, a slightly different idea: how about if you just use --one-file-system (or short -x) for backing up /?

You'll need a borg create call for each filesystem then, but if that is just e.g. / and /home, that separation makes sense anyway.

[xeruf]

I guess that makes sense, since it will also exclude /tmp, /run and the like then? I think I was not aware of the flag. Maybe warrants a FAQ entry.

Though there are still standards like XDG_CACHE_HOME, maybe this can be automatically excluded with --exclude-caches, too, though?

[ThomasWaldmann]

Well, --one-file-system is on the borg create help page / man page / builtin help.

--exclude-caches is documented to only exclude dirs containing a CACHEDIR.TAG file, so that would change the behaviour. while we could to that in a breaking release (like the upcoming borg2), guess it might be better to just add another option like --exclude-xdg-cache-home?

OTOH, if that path is in that env var, you could just add $XDG_CACHE_HOME to your exclude list in your borg script and we could save adding that option and keep the docs shorter.

[goebbe]

Just to put a data point. Using borg to backup my home directory on Linux Mint 21 (based on Ubuntu 22.04)

• ~/.cache contains roughly 500 folders/subfolders with a total of 1.6 GB of data.
• Inside ~.cache: borg and fontconfig are the only folders that use the CACHEDIR.TAG (which cover a total of 20 MB)
• On my system, most of the CACHEDIR.TAG s (several hundred) are used outside the home directory (e.g. in /timeshift/*)

On this system, $XDG_CACHE_HOME is not set. :-( (Debian based distribution)

I believe the option --exclude-caches is clearly documented, but the name is unfortunate, since it can easily be misunderstood. Perhaps --exclude-tagged-caches would be a more appropriate name for this option?

By the way, there is also the experimental --no-cache-sync which adds to the confusion. Is this only about the borg cache i.e. ~.cache/borg ?

Most users which backup their home directory and which use --exclude-caches are likely to desire a variant of: --exclude /home/*/.cache too. However, this is easy to miss. Perhaps there could be an explicit hint in the documentation?

Just thinking loud: Could the --exclude-caches be extended by keywords?
Something like --exclude-caches TYPE where TYPE could be "borgcaches", "taggedchaches" "allcaches" which are superseeding each other. "allcaches" could include */.cache and $XDG_CACHE_HOME. If no TYPE is provided, borg could fall back to the current behaviour.