Excluding files from a backup

Last reviewed: 2025-12-08 / Plakar v1.0.6

The plakar backup command supports the -ignore and -ignore-file options to exclude files from a backup.

These options use patterns with a syntax similar to .gitignore files.

Examples

For the examples below, we assume the following directory structure in /var/files/demo:

/var/files/demo
├── .cache
│   └── index.db
├── .config
├── .env
├── .env.local
├── .git
│   ├── config
│   └── hooks
├── build
│   ├── app.bin
│   └── app.o
├── config
│   ├── config.local.yaml
│   └── config.yaml
├── Documents
│   ├── Invoices
│   │   ├── invoice1.pdf
│   │   └── invoice2.pdf
│   └── Reports
│       ├── report1.docx
│       └── report2.docx
├── logs
│   ├── app.log
│   └── error.log
├── node_modules
│   ├── module1.js
│   └── module2.js
├── Pictures
│   ├── Family
│   │   └── photo1.jpg
│   └── Vacation
│       └── photo2.png
├── src
│   ├── main.go
│   ├── secret.key
│   └── utils.go
├── tmp
│   ├── cache.db
│   └── tempfile.tmp
└── vendor
    └── github.com
        ├── lib1.go
        └── lib2.go

And we assume the backup command is:

plakar at /var/backups backup -ignore-file ./excludes.txt /var/files

You can use -ignore multiple times with different patterns, or use -ignore-file with a file containing one pattern per line. The result is the same.

Ignore the /var/files/demo/vendor directory only:

/var/files/demo/vendor

Ignore the node_modules directory, wherever it is in the tree:

node_modules

In this case, both /var/files/demo/node_modules and /var/files/demo/src/node_modules would be ignored.

Ignore the file .git/config, wherever it is in the tree:

**/.git/config

Here, the double asterisk ** is required.

When a path pattern contains multiple parts, it is evaluated relative to the root directory /.

Exclude all files located in a tmp directory anywhere in the tree, except for cache.db:

**/tmp/*
!**/tmp/cache.db

Exclude everything, except .pdf and .docx files:

*
!**/*.pdf
!**/*.docx