Dell NetWorker 19.9 Administration Guide

Defining directory specifications using wildcards

You can use wildcards in the directory specification to avoid maintaining multiple directives for specific directory paths in both the NetWorker server and the NetWorker client directive files.

To use wildcards in a directory specification, you must type an asterisk before the directory path. For example: This asterisk does not do any matching and only enables the use of any following wildcards in the directory specification.

• UNIX: << */directory_specification/ >>
• Windows: << "*\directory_specification\" >>

Consider the following examples for using wildcards:

• The following UNIX directive skips backing up the tmp folder data for each user whose name starts with letters A, B, C, or D:

  << */*/users/[A-D]*/tmp/ >> +skip: *

• The following Windows directive compresses the tmp folder data for each user whose name starts with letters A, B, C, or D:

  << "*C:\*\users\[A-D]*\tmp\" >> +compressasm: *

• Networker does not support symbolic links in skip directives. Symbolic links are considered as regular files.

  For example, the symbolic link for the file example.dbf is .example.dbf.To skip the file .example.dbf, you must use +skip: .*.dbf.

• Do not use wildcards in Windows VSS source volume directory mount names.

Defining multiple directory specifications

• Directives that follow a directory specification apply the ASM action to that directory until the next directory specification.
• Directory specifications that do not contain wildcards take precedence over directory specifications that contain wildcards. For example, when a directive encounters a directory that matches a wildcard directory specification and a non-wildcard directory specification, the directive will only apply the action defined in the ASM of the non-wildcard directory specification of the directory.

Defining mount points in the directory specification

Directory mount names of Windows VSS source volumes cannot contain wildcards. For example, you cannot create a directory specification in the format << "*?:\data\*\" >> . You must specify each drive letter, for example << "C:\data\*\" >>, and create a separate directory specification for it.

Defining a directory specification for a Windows client system

• File and directory names are case-insensitive.
• If there is a colon (:) in the pathname, enclose the entire path in quotation marks.

Order of execution in the directive

The command that is listed first in the directive takes precedence over the rest of the commands.

When the first command in the directive is compressasm, then all the files are compressed. The skip command in the directive is ignored. Example

+compressasm -gzip -1: * .* *.*
+skip: *.LRG
+skip: *.CAT
+skip: *.TLB

When the compressasm is positioned at the end of the directive, the commands in the directive work in the order that is mentioned. The files specified with +skip are skipped and the rest are compressed. Example

+skip: zzz_DUMMY*

+skip: *.tmp

+skip: .db2diag.log.swp

skip: tmp_mnt

+compressasm -gzip -1: * .* *.*