Strange Behaviour When Using --exclude During Purge

Support
1

I think I found a bug when using --exclude with the purge command via the GUI commandline

Let’s say I am using this dataset, already created via Duplicati previously

/sharedfolders/Videos/
/sharedfolders/Music/
/sharedfolders/Others/
/sharedfolders/video1.mkv
/sharedfolders/video2.mkv
/sharedfolders/video3.mkv
/sharedfolders/song1.mp3
/sharedfolders/song2.mp3
/sharedfolders/notes.txt

The plan was to get two copies of this dataset such that:

//Dataset 1
/sharedfolders/Music/
/sharedfolders/Others/
/sharedfolders/song1.mp3
/sharedfolders/song2.mp3
/sharedfolders/notes.txt

//Dataset 2
/sharedfolders/Videos/
/sharedfolders/video1.mkv
/sharedfolders/video2.mkv
/sharedfolders/video3.mkv

So I made two copies of the data and wanted to use the Purge command on each of them

If I were to use the following argument

--include="/sharedfolders/Music/*"
--include="/sharedfolders/Others/*"
--include="/sharedfolders/song1.mp3"
--include="/sharedfolders/song2.mp3"
--include="/sharedfolders/notes.txt"

This works fine for Dataset 1 but the challenge begins with Dataset 2

If I were to use the following argument

--include="/sharedfolders/Videos/*"

The folder “Videos” would be removed but not the individual video files at root directory. It would be ok if the numbers are just a few since I can just purge them individually by identifying them individually per line but I thought I had a better idea.

I tried this argument

--exclude="/sharedfolders/Music/*"
--exclude="/sharedfolders/Others/*"
--include="/sharedfolders/Videos/*"
--include="/sharedfolders/*.mkv"

The following got removed

/sharedfolders/Videos/
/sharedfolders/video1.mkv
/sharedfolders/video2.mkv
/sharedfolders/video3.mkv
/sharedfolders/song1.mp3  //I do not want this removed
/sharedfolders/song2.mp3  //I do not want this removed
/sharedfolders/notes.txt  //I do not want this removed

In other words, it appears that using any --exclude arguments will mean everything from root directory will be included unless specifically excluded by further --exclude arguments.

Or to put it in a more “standard” bug report format:

Expected behaviour: Only specified directories ignored but no other directories excluded/included unless otherwise specified in other arguments
Observed behaviour: Specified directories ignored but all other directories/files included unless specifically excluded in other arguments

May I know if this is intentional by design? Also, how would one be able to solve this problem?

2

Very old thread… But I have the same problem with the purge so I reanimate it.

I wanted to purge everything expect one folder

–exclude=“\r2016\c\LDEURO*”
–include=“[.*]”

and the dryrun shows this:
[Dryrun]: Purging file \r2016\c\LDEURO.…\somefile (x,xx MB)
[Dryrun]: Purging file \r2016\c\LDEURO.…

Why? The normal filter logic is: determine filter by filter, and if a filter matches stop.

So for this, I would expect for the first file: EXCLUDE matches, so do not purge.

3

It’s missing a drive letter. This is Windows, right? Use The TEST-FILTERS command to test Filters.

4

Hello,

no, there is no drive letter missing. The forum swallowed the second backslash!
r2016 ist a hostname and c is a share name and LDEURO is a directory.

I know TESTFILTERS. But the PURGE command works the other way as the filters for eg. BACKUP!

For my backup it works:

  • Have \\r2016\c\ as root
  • EXCLUDE [.*\temp\.*] (for all temp folders)
  • EXCLUDE [.*\\.git\.*]
  • INCLUDE LDEURO with a REGEX
  • EXCLUDE [.*]

So from Share C the folders defined with REGEX are all included but TEMP or .git Folders in this folders are excluded and everything else in C is excluded.

This work fine in the backup!

Now for PURGE I tried the same. Purge everything, that is not LDEURO.

So EXCLUDE LDEURO with REGEX
and INCLUDE everything.

5

Putting single (or in some cases triple) backticks around the item can avoid character interpretations.

So that’s a change from before, when it was a wildcard? In a regex, backslashes have to be doubled.

This is hard to piece together. Maybe you can post your lines, using triple backticks above and below.
Even better, post what test-filters does, if you can come up with a small tree that’s similar to real.

6

Ok. I’m sorry for the missleading Backslash things.

To clearify: The Regex includes/excludes work fine in the BACKUP COMMAND => so I think the regex strings itself are correct.

For the purge command, I edited the backup command a little bit. I removed the temp and .git and changed the include to a exclude because this LDEURO should NOT be purged, and the exclude for .* to include because everything else should be purged.

So here the filter in the BACKUP (working)
Source: \\r2016\r\ (2 backslashes at the start and one at the end)

--exclude="[.*\\temp\\.*]
--exclude="[.*\\\.git\\.*]
--include="[\\\\r2016\\c\\LDEURO\\.*]
--exclude="[.*]"

and here the filter in the PURGE, the purge does not have a SOURCE.
This is not working as expected, as you can see on the first LOG Outout (and the initial poster said the same thing):

--exclude="[\\\\r2016\\c\\LDEURO\\.*]
--include="[.*]"

This does not exclude LDEURO-Dir from purging!

7

I tried now to reproduce it with a simple test backup, but I am not able to…
I will retry it tomorrow.

8

I am sorry. I cannot reproduce it!

I deleted the whole backup, and then tried again to purge something with exclulde and include and it worked.